Lingchi
by MaureenT
Summary: After a devastating personal loss, all of Daniel's feelings of guilt and failure finally come to a head. Will he ever see the truth about himself or will his friends and the Stargate Program lose him forever? This story is very AU. COMPLETE
1. Chapter 1

**Lingchi**

**Author:** MaureenT  
**Rating:** T  
**Categories:** Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Drama  
**Content Warning:** Mild Profanity  
**Spoilers:** Several episodes up through the end of Season 5.

**Author's Note:** In Meridian we got a good look into Daniel's heart and saw the truth of how he felt about himself and his life. What if certain things happened differently, and something else became the catalyst to his ultimate descent into those feelings of guilt and the belief that his entire life had been a complete failure?

Oh, and don't worry about the fic's title, the meaning of which is explained below. There is no physical torture in this story. It is a lingchi of the soul.

* * *

_**Lingchi** (also Ling Chi or Leng T'che)_ – A form of execution used in China until 1905 in which the condemned person was killed by using a knife to methodically remove portions of their body over an extended period of time. Also known as Slow Slicing, The Slow Process, The Lingering Death, and Death by a Thousand Cuts.

INTRODUCTION

In this "universe", Yu succeeded in killing Anubis all those centuries ago, so he never ascended. Because of this, the events of Summit/Last Stand never happened. The Goa'uld summit took place because of the heavy losses incurred by all of the System Lords during the fighting going on as a result of the power vacuum created by the deaths of Cronus and Apophis. They were meeting to discuss the establishment of a new order rather than continue fighting and wiping each other out. However, the real culprit in the majority of those losses was Anubis, so, without him around, the losses suffered by the System Lords weren't heavy enough for them to make such a decision. Also, the Tok'ra base at Revanna was not destroyed because Anubis was not around to discover its location and send Zipacna to attack it, meaning that there are a lot more Tok'ra still alive. And, of course, Osiris never joined forces with Anubis. There are other differences as well because of Anubis' demise, but these are the only ones that affect this story.

This story begins some time after the events of The Sentinel.

* * *

CHAPTER ONE

General George Hammond and the four members of SG-1 focused their attention upon the sixth person sitting at the briefing room table.

"We have received word that the System Lord Ba'al is meeting with another Goa'uld in several days to discuss an alliance," Bra'tac announced.

Jack's eyebrows lifted fractionally. "An alliance? The so-called alliance between Apophis and Heru'ru didn't work out so well for Heru'ru. Granted, we had a little bit to do with that, but the fact that Apophis had all those ships waiting in hiding kind of makes me think that he might have been planning something anyway."

"That may be true. However, occasionally, the Goa'uld do form alliances if each party believes it will benefit themselves. Most of the alliances are short-lived."

"I bet," Daniel murmured.

"Who's the other Goa'uld?" Sam asked.

"This we do not know, though word has it that it is not a System Lord."

Jack asked the next question. "So, where is this little chat supposed to be taking place?"

"On a barren world called Afinon, which has no Stargate," Bra'tac replied. "The solar system is devoid of life and contains nothing of value to the Goa'uld, so it is an ideal place to hold such a meeting."

"What do we know about Ba'al?" Hammond asked.

"I've done some research on most of the present System Lords," Daniel answered, "and, by all accounts, Ba'al is a pretty nasty character."

"Aren't all Goa'uld nasty characters?" Jack countered.

"Pretty much, but some are worse than others. Ba'al once wiped out the inhabitants of two star systems, sixty million people, rather than lose them to Sokar in a territorial dispute."

"Nice guy. Sounds like it's way past time for him to get his comeuppance. I wonder if we can use this meeting to do that," Jack smiled, "maybe with the help of our shiny new Al'Kesh." He paused. "Okay, so it's not exactly shiny or new, but it's new to us."

Sam smiled ever so slightly. The colonel was still crowing about the recent mission that netted them an Al'Kesh Attack Bomber. Unlike the mothership they acquired last year, this ship wasn't going to be lent out to the Tok'ra, so the SGC would have full use of it, although, since it was intel from the Tok'ra that enabled them to capture it, a case could be made that it would only be fair to use it occasionally to aid their allies on missions.

"It is likely that, due to the untrusting nature of the Goa'uld, both Ba'al and the other Goa'uld will not be permitted to bring a large fleet to the meeting," Teal'c said.

"So, they'd be in a weakened position," Jack responded.

"Yes, but even if they each bring just one mothership, that's way more than we could handle with an Al'Kesh," Sam pointed out.

"Too bad the planet doesn't have a Stargate. Then we could lob a big bomb through the gate, and that would take care of everything." Jack's face lit up. "Hey, here's an idea. How about if we blow up the sun like we did that other one?"

"If you recall, Jack, that other time resulted in us getting blown four million light-years across the universe," Daniel said.

Sam had a thoughtful look on her face. "Yes, but that only happened because we were delayed in getting out of there. If we left as soon as the Stargate was launched into the sun, we'd be fine. And an Al'Kesh would be large enough to carry a Stargate in its hold. It's definitely something to think about."

"Don't you think that perhaps we should contact the Tok'ra first and find out what they know about this meeting before we blow up another sun? They also might have operatives on one of the ships that would be there."

Hammond nodded. "You are right, of course. We could not make this kind of strike without first talking to the Tok'ra."

The Tok'ra were contacted a short while later. In response, Jacob came through the gate. He was asked if the Tok'ra knew anything about the upcoming meeting between Ba'al and the unknown Goa'uld.

"We did hear about it, but I'm afraid that we don't have any more information than you do. We were thinking about getting some operatives in there to find out more about it, including the name of the other Goa'uld."

"You might want to hold off on that," Jack told Sam's father.

"Oh?"

Jacob was told about the idea to destroy the sun as they did Vorash's. This made the former general smile ever so slightly.

"You know, blowing up suns isn't exactly a habit you should get into."

"Hey, at least it doesn't cause cancer," Jack quipped.

"I don't know if the council would agree to doing that a second time, although it would definitely be nice to get rid of Ba'al. He is now one of the most powerful of the System Lords, having gained a lot of power in the fighting that went on among the System Lords after the deaths of Cronus and Apophis. Not only that, but he is also one of the most intelligent, very tech savvy. One of our operatives infiltrated his forces by posing as a minor Goa'uld and was stationed in a secret stronghold of Ba'al's for several months. Before we pulled him out, Kanan was able to map out the complex and gain intelligence about all of its defenses, and, according to his report, Ba'al has been successfully experimenting with various technologies using gravity that could potentially be turned into weapons. We all agree that, sooner or later, he's probably going to become a big problem."

"Well, then it sounds like now would be a good time to get rid of him so that he doesn't become a problem later on."

Jacob nodded. "All right. I'll present this to the rest of the council and see what they have to say. If they agree with the mission, and if you don't mind, I'll tag along just in case you need my help."

"Hey, you're always welcome, Jacob . . . unlike most of the other Tok'ra."

Jacob headed straight back to the Tok'ra base. He returned three hours later.

"The Tok'ra think that it wouldn't be wise to blow up another sun," he announced, "but there is another option, an idea that came from something you guys did. Afinon never had a Naquadah mining operation because there were no deposits large enough to warrant the effort. However, the soil of the planet is laced with traces of Naquadah."

"Oh, I know where this is going," Sam said. "You're proposing that we do what we did when General Bauer was in command of the SGC."

The other members of SG-1 shared a glance. Sam was talking about the incident that nearly resulted in the destruction of Stargate Command and could have ultimately destroyed all life on Earth. Bauer ordered that a Naquadah-enhanced nuclear bomb be constructed by Sam. What she didn't know until later was that the plan was to detonate the bomb on a planet that contained Naquadah in the soil. It was hoped that the blast would cause a chain reaction, destroying the whole planet, a test to see if it would be a feasible form of attack against the Goa'uld since most Goa'uld-controlled worlds had Naquadah.

The bomb was sent through, and, despite Sam's warnings, the Stargate was kept connected as it was detonated. The gate was not destroyed in the blast, as the "intelligence" Bauer was provided said it would be, and deadly gamma radiation began pouring through the gate. Thankfully, the gate disconnected after the thirty-eight-minute window, otherwise, even if they had blown up the base, burying Earth's Stargate with it, the gates would likely have remained connected, and the radiation may have eventually escaped into Earth's atmosphere, poisoning the planet.

Jacob nodded. "Now, although Afinon's Stargate must have been destroyed or buried a long time ago, there are small remnants of structures and a ring platform that no longer works. Our best guess is that the meeting will take place in that general area. As the Tok'ra confirmed, that bomb you detonated turned the entire planet into one big ball of superheated plasma. If we did the same with Afinon, the bomb could be planted far enough away from the meeting area that it wouldn't be discovered, yet it would still do the trick. And because there is no functioning ring platform, the only way to get on or off the planet is by ship. They wouldn't be able to get away in time to escape the destruction."

"And you're sure that nobody lives on that planet?" Daniel asked. After the bomb test, he had been worried that the SGC may have been responsible for the deaths of thousands, perhaps millions of people since only a fifty-mile radius from the gate was searched. Thankfully, according to the Tok'ra, there had been no intelligent life on the planet. He wanted to make sure that the same was true with this one.

"Yes, we're sure. It was abandoned a long time ago. In fact, the planet is pretty much devoid of life, perhaps due to some kind of global mass extinction."

All eyes turned to General Hammond.

"Very well," he said. "I will have to talk to the president since it will require the use of a Naquadah bomb, but you have my permission to proceed."

Sam got busy on the bomb. Since the ill-fated incident with the first one, the program had continued perfecting Naquadah bombs, recognizing that a day might come when such a weapon would be needed. However, due to their limited supply of refined Naquadah and the difficulties in getting more, the bombs were considered extremely valuable.

The president approved of the plan, and SG-1 and Jacob headed off to Afinon in a scout ship equipped with a cloaking device instead of the Al'Kesh since the change in plans required that they be able to remain out of sight yet stay close to the planet.

"We should be arriving a full day before the Goa'uld do," Sam said, "so we'll have plenty of time to set up the bomb."

"If at all possible, we want to keep the Goa'uld guessing about what happened and why," her father added, "so, after the bomb detonates, we'll take the ship to the other side of the sun before we engage the hyperdrive. It will hide the hyperspace window from the sensors of the motherships."

"Leaving everyone on those ships scratching their heads and wondering what made the planet go boom," Jack said.

Jacob nodded. "If we're lucky, all of the Goa'uld will start accusing each other of being responsible."

It took two days for the scout ship to reach Afinon's star system. They landed on the surface ten miles from the spot where the Tok'ra figured the meeting would take place.

"Lovely place," Jack remarked, looking around at the barren landscape, seeing not one plant or any other signs of life.

The bomb was buried just below the surface, and Sam tested to make sure that the remote triggering device was operational.

They took the scout ship to a location where they were close enough to keep an eye on what was going on, but far enough away to be well out of the danger zone. And then they settled down to wait, the part of the mission Jack hated most.

As expected, Ba'al and the other Goa'uld arrived the following day, the two motherships taking up positions above the planet, remaining a respectful distance from each other. After several minutes, a lone transport ship was launched from each of the vessels, carrying the Goa'uld to their rendevous point.

"Has anyone thought about what we're going to do if they pick an entirely different spot for their meeting?" Jack asked.

His question did not need to be answered since the ships did land in the place where the Tok'ra guessed they would. The team waited ten more minutes to give the Goa'uld time to disembark.

"Okay, I'd say that's enough time," Jacob said.

"Let's blow the place," Jack ordered.

With the push of a button, the signal was sent. Seconds later, a bright spot bloomed on the planet. With shocking speed, it spread across the surface, consuming everything in its path. Within moments, the entire planet was transformed into a bright white ball of incandescent light, as if it had been turned into a miniature star.

"My God," Sam murmured. Even knowing what was going to happen, she still hadn't quite been prepared for the sight of the planet's destruction.

"According to the sensors, neither ship made it off the planet before it went," Jacob announced.

"So we did it?" Jack asked.

"I'd say so, though we can't be completely certain yet. We'll have to wait to find out for sure. By the time we get back to Earth, the Tok'ra should know if we were successful."

Jack looked at the two motherships. "You know, I'd pay a lot to see the look that must be on the faces of the guys on those ships."

Using the sublight engines, Jacob took the scout ship to the other side of the sun, then engaged the hyperdrive.

When the team made it back to Earth, they were greeted with the news that, according to intelligence gathered by the Tok'ra, the mission had been a complete success.

"Congratulations," Hammond said to SG-1 and Jacob.

"Thank you, sir," Jack responded.

"So, what happens now?" Daniel asked.

"Well, in regards to the Goa'uld, there will likely be a scuffle over Ba'al's territories," Jacob replied.

"Maybe some of them will kill each other in the fighting, and we'll get rid of even more snakes," Jack remarked.

As they left the briefing room, Jack announced, "I'm in the mood to celebrate. How about we all go to my place for pizza and beer?"

"Sounds good, sir," Sam replied.

Jack turned to the Tok'ra in their midst. "Jacob? You're welcome to join us."

"Thanks, but I need to get back to the base. We'll be busy monitoring the situation and seeing how everything turns out."

"So, who do you think will end up getting Ba'al's territories?" Daniel asked.

"That's hard to say, although Lord Yu is in the best position to take advantage of the sudden vacancy."

That evening, SG-1 gathered at Jack's place.

"Score two more dead snakes," the colonel said with a smile as he and his teammates sat in his living room, their stomachs full of pizza and beer bottles in their hands, except for Teal'c, of course, who held a glass of juice.

"I can't believe we managed to pull that off without a hitch," Sam commented. "Things usually don't go that smoothly."

"Well, maybe our luck is changing. It's about time that things really started going our way." Jack looked over at Daniel, who was frowning down at his beer. "Daniel? How come you don't look so happy that we got rid of two more Goa'uld?"

Daniel blinked and looked at him. "What? Oh. No, I'm happy, although I really didn't have anything to do with it. I was just along for the ride."

"Well, if you look at it like that, so was I. But we were all there as a team. It was SG-1 that did this, and you're a part of SG-1. Right?"

Daniel paused before answering. "Right."

* * *

SG-1 hadn't been at work for long the next day when there was an unscheduled incoming wormhole, which turned out to be a call from the Tok'ra. It was Jacob who came through the gate. He gathered with Hammond and SG-1 in the briefing room.

"I'm afraid that I have some news," the Tok'ra said. "Some new information has come to light about the meeting."

"Oh, don't tell us," Jack groaned. "Ba'al escaped after all."

"No, it's been confirmed that he's dead. This is about the Goa'uld he was meeting. We found out who it was."

"Who?" Jack asked, wondering about the somber expression on the former general's face.

Jacob turned to Daniel. "I'm really sorry to be the one to have to tell you this, Daniel. It was Osiris."

"Oh my God," Sam gasped. She turned to the archeologist and watched as the color drained from his face.

"We figure that Osiris was planning on using an alliance with Ba'al to strengthen his own position," Jacob continued. "We're not sure what Ba'al hoped to get out of it."

Daniel didn't hear Jacob's words, his mind filling with grief and guilt over the knowledge that he'd helped kill Sarah.

"Excuse me," he choked out, then bolted from the room.

"Damn," Jack cursed. Why, out of all the Goa'uld in the galaxy, did it have to be Osiris?

"We should have found out who it was before," Sam said, weighed down with her own burden of guilt. "If we had known, we wouldn't have done it."

"There just wasn't time, Sam," Jacob told her regretfully. "We had to act quickly or lose our chance to get Ba'al." He sighed. "I'd tell Daniel that the chances that we could have rescued Sarah were never very good and that she was better off dead than being a host, but I doubt it would make him feel better."

Sam shook her head. "First Sha're, then Robert Rothman, and, now, Sarah. I can't even imagine how he must be feeling."

It was a very sober Jack, Sam and Teal'c who went to Daniel's office a short while later. None of them were surprised when they saw that he wasn't there. Jack called the front gate and confirmed that Daniel had left the base.

The colonel scrubbed his face with his hands. "Crap. What a mess."

Upset and hurting for her friend, Sam said, "We need to talk to him, sir."

"And say what, Carter? He's lost yet another person he cared about because of those damn Goa'uld, and I don't think that a few platitudes are really going to help."

"Daniel Jackson has suffered a great deal of loss because of the Goa'uld," Teal'c stated. "But he is strong and will persevere."

"Yeah, but how long is it going to take before he gets over it this time?"

* * *

The tears slipped silently down Daniel's cheeks as he sat huddled on the couch, grief and guilt warring for supremacy inside his heart. Sarah was dead, and all his hopes for saving her were gone. He'd failed to save her, just as he had failed to save Sha're, only, this time, not only had he failed to save a person he cared about, he had participated in killing her.

Daniel got up and went to the bedroom. Not turning on the light, he laid down on the bed. He stared into the dark of night as the guilt and anguish kept pulling him under. Ever since Sha're's death, a feeling had been growing inside him that all the things he'd done in his life had been for nothing, that nothing he ever did really mattered. What had he truly accomplished except to do things that ultimately resulted in the death of someone who mattered to him? Sha're was dead because of him, Robert died in an effort to save him, and, now, Sarah's blood was on his hands.

Daniel felt like a condemned prisoner doomed to the slow death of lingchi, the Death by a Thousand Cuts. Sha're and then Skaara being taken as hosts, his rape at the hands of Hathor, the guilt of what he did while under the influence of the sarcophagus addiction, seeing his beloved wife pregnant with another man's child and then losing her again to the Goa'uld inside her, the commitment to Mental Health, watching Sha're die before his eyes. The list went on and on, each one a cut that left his soul bleeding.

Sometimes, he wondered why he even kept trying, kept fighting, especially when, no matter how hard he tried to make a real difference, he mostly succeeded in doing nothing much at all.

Maybe it was finally time to stop trying.

* * *

Jack stood at the door, trying to compose the words he was going to say. Daniel had not come to work today, hadn't even called to say he wasn't coming in, which was totally unlike the usually considerate archeologist. There was no mystery about why Daniel wasn't there, of course, but the fact that he was also not answering his phone was really worrying the other members of SG-1. Not even when Sha're died did Daniel completely cut off communication like this.

Sam had volunteered to come talk to Daniel, but Jack told her that he was the one who needed to do this. Now that he was actually here, however, he really didn't know what to say and was starting to wish that he'd let Sam come. She was a hell of a lot better at talking about feelings than he was.

At last Jack knocked on the door. When he didn't get an answer, he tried again with still no response. Maybe Daniel wasn't home. His car was in its usual parking space, but he might have gone out for a walk.

Jack thought about leaving, but his worry over his friend kept him from doing so. Instead, he pulled out the key Daniel had given to him and unlocked the door.

"Daniel?" he called softly. Getting no reply, he stepped inside and shut the door. He glanced about, seeing no sign of the archeologist. Concluding that Daniel must be gone, Jack headed for the kitchen to get a beer and await the man's return. But then he saw the food that sat uneaten on the kitchen table, and a sick feeling of deja vu hit him, deja vu caused by another time that he came to Daniel's house and found an uneaten meal on the table.

Jack's eyes went to the French doors leading to the balcony, the balcony that Jack had refused to set foot upon since the day that would be burned forever upon his memory, the day he found his best friend inches away from taking his own life.

The sick, tight feeling growing in his stomach, Jack approached the balcony. The doors were closed and the blinds drawn, hiding the balcony from view. He stood before the doors for a moment, then slowly opened one, his eyes coming to rest upon something he really didn't want to see: Daniel standing at the railing. For a gut-wrenching moment, Jack's mind transposed the image with that from his memory and saw his friend on the wrong side of the railing, hands gripping the metal bar, moments away from letting go. The colonel shook off the stark image and looked again to see that, this time, Daniel was on the proper side of the railing . . . which was still not at all to Jack's liking.

Jack took a step out onto the balcony.

"Um . . . Daniel?" he inquired hesitantly. He got no reaction from the archeologist. "I . . . decided to stop by and check on you. You weren't answering your phone."

"I didn't feel like talking," Daniel replied in a low voice that was almost monotone.

"Well . . . I can understand that. But I'm here, so maybe we can talk now . . . or something. How about if you, uh . . . come on inside. Okay?"

Daniel made a little choking sound that could have been an abbreviated laugh.

"Are you afraid I'm going to jump, Jack? Don't worry. I'm not suicidal."

That made the colonel feel only a little bit better. "I'd still feel a whole lot better if you came inside," he said. _'Away from that railing,'_ he finished in his mind.

Daniel's grip on the railing tightened for a moment, then he stepped away from it. He brushed past Jack without looking at him and went into the living room to the unlit fireplace, where he stared into the cold, dark opening, hands on the mantle.

"I really don't feel like talking, Jack," he said.

"Okay, then I'll do the talking. I understand how you feel, Daniel. I've lost friends, too, because of the brutality of war, and it's never easy."

"And were you ever actually the one who killed any of those friends?"

"Daniel, you didn't kill Sarah. You didn't push the button. You weren't the one who approved the mission. You weren't even the one who came up with the idea."

"But I was a part of the mission. You said it yourself, Jack. It was SG-1 that did it, and I am a member of SG-1, so I am equally responsible for her death."

Jack cursed silently as his own words came back to bite him in the butt.

"Okay, so you were there. But we didn't know, Daniel. None of us knew that it was Osiris on that planet."

"But we should have known. We should have waited until we found out. When we encountered the Eurondans, I didn't think that we should take sides in a war that we knew nothing about until we at least found out who the people on the other side of the conflict were. I knew it was wrong to rush in and aid in the destruction of people who were a complete unknown to us. But, this time, I didn't care. I didn't really question it. It didn't matter to me who it was that Ba'al was meeting. All I cared about was that it was a Goa'uld. I let my hatred for them override my common sense and morality, and Sarah paid the price."

"Daniel, how many Goa'uld are there out there? Thousands? What were the odds that it would be Osiris who was meeting Ba'al? I sure didn't consider that it might be her. Neither did anyone else, including Jacob. We saw a chance to kill a System Lord, and we took it. If it had been any other of all those thousands of Goa'uld, we would still be celebrating."

"But it wasn't any of the others. It was Osiris. It was Sarah."

"Yes. Yes, it was, and you need to accept that and move on. You're not to blame for this, Daniel."

Tears filled Daniel's eyes. "I wanted so badly to save her, Jack. I wanted to do with her what I failed to do with Sha're. But I failed her, too." His voice dropped to a whisper. "I've failed with everything."

Before Jack could ask what he meant, Daniel was gone, fleeing from the apartment. With a long sigh, Jack lowered himself into a chair. How was he going to fix this? How was he going to make Daniel see that Sarah's death was just a tragic, unintended consequence of their ongoing war against the Goa'uld?

Jack remained waiting at the apartment for an hour, then gave up and went home. Not feeling the least bit hungry, he got a beer from the fridge and settled in the recliner, where he just sat and stared, not consuming the beer either.

Maybe the best thing to do would be to just back off and let Daniel come to terms with this himself, as he did with Sha're's death. It might take a while, but he would eventually get through these feelings and move on.

Jack decided to suggest that the archeologist take a few days off, which would probably be for the best. He'd have to tell Carter and Teal'c to leave Daniel be, though he knew that the major wouldn't want to do that, just as she didn't want to when Daniel was grieving over the loss of Sha're. But among the many things that Jack had learned about his best friend during these years was the fact that, when Daniel was hurting, he preferred to suffer in solitude. That was one way that the two of them were exactly alike.

Knowing that he wouldn't get an answer, Jack called Daniel's cell phone.

"Hey. It's Jack. I hope that you're actually listening to your messages and not just deleting them. I'm thinking that it would do you some good to take a few days off, maybe even go somewhere. I'll clear it with Hammond, so you don't have to worry about calling in a request." Jack paused. "Well, that's all I have to say. I guess I'll see you when you come back in."

Hanging up the phone, Jack finally took a drink from his beer bottle, hoping that a few days away from the SGC would help Daniel deal with this newest loss in his life.

* * *

Daniel listened to the last message from Jack. The archeologist knew that a few days away weren't going to fix things. It wouldn't even help. It wouldn't change the cold, hard facts of Sarah's death or of a life that had been one failure after another. Nothing would change that. But there was something he could do that might allow him to live what was left of his life with at least a small measure of peace, something he would never find as long as he continued to struggle in a fruitless attempt to make some kind of real difference in a war that he'd never wanted to be a part of in the first place.

Daniel sat at his desk and booted up his laptop. He opened the text editor and began to type.

_This letter is my formal notice of resignation from the Stargate Program, effective immediately. I have come to the conclusion that I can no longer work for the program in any capacity. My reasons for this are personal and have nothing to do with any individual within the program. I wish to state for the record that General George Hammond is a fine commander and someone for whom I have nothing but the highest regard and respect._

Respectfully,

Doctor Daniel Jackson


	2. Chapter 2

CHAPTER TWO

General Hammond somberly looked at the three people before him. In his hand was an envelope.

"When I came in this morning, I found this on my desk," he said. "It is Doctor Jackson's letter of resignation."

"Oh, no," Sam murmured, closing her eyes for a moment.

"I think that all of us know why this has happened, and, looking back on it now, I wish to God that we didn't carry out that mission. But what's done is done, and we can't go back and change it. All we can do now is try to convince Daniel to stay, because his loss from the program is too high a price to pay for the victory we achieved."

The three teammates headed straight to Daniel's office, hoping that they'd catch him still in the process of packing up his belongings. When they got there, they saw that he was already gone. A couple of empty boxes sat on the floor, and everything in the room had been tidied up. Daniel's base keycard lay on the desk, proof that the archeologist did not intend to return. It appeared that he'd taken very little from the room, just some of the books and his personal items. Most disturbing of all was that he'd left so many of the books behind.

Sam touched one of them. "He left the books. He loves his books. Why did he leave them?"

"Because, if he hadn't, he'd still be here," Jack guessed, "and he wanted to be out of here before we arrived."

"It may be that there is another reason as well, O'Neill," Teal'c stated. "When a man wishes to truly break ties with his old life, he may choose to leave behind all things that were a part of that life."

Jack didn't like the sound of that. "I'm going to go talk to him."

"Do you want us to come, too?" Sam asked, feeling like she needed to do something to stop this from happening.

Jack shook his head. "It'll be best if it's just me, Carter."

Jack changed into his civilian clothes and headed over to Daniel's. There was no answer to his first knock, so he knocked again a little louder. After several seconds, the door opened. Daniel didn't look happy to see him.

"I figured you'd be showing up," the archeologist said in resignation. "Nothing you say is going to change my mind, Jack."

Jack pushed by him and entered the apartment. "How about me reminding you of what it is that we're doing there? We're fighting the Goa'uld, the ones who are really responsible for what happened to Sarah, not to mention Sha're. You're just going to walk away from that?"

"Me not being there isn't going to make a difference with that. The fight will keep right on going without me. The SGC doesn't need me for it, and neither does SG-1."

Jack frowned deeply upon hearing the last part of the final sentence. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

Daniel didn't answer. He walked past Jack and went into the kitchen. "Just go back to the base, Jack. I've made my decision."

The colonel's voice hardened. "Not until you've answered my question."

Daniel whirled around. "Fine. Then here's a question for you. What's my role on the team?"

Caught by surprise, Jack didn't answer right away.

Daniel continued without waiting. "You're the team leader, Sam is the genius with technology and physics, and Teal'c is the expert in the Goa'uld and Jaffa. So, what about me? I'm an archeologist. Haven't really been using that skill set very much lately, now have I. The same goes for my knowledge in anthropology and history. As for my linguistic skills, I've used them all of three times this year. You know what I have been doing a lot? Shooting things and helping to blow things up." His tone became tinged with pain and guilt. "And look where that got me."

Jack was dismayed by the younger man's words. He had thought that Daniel was okay with the fighting, that his friend was all right with the way things were changing.

"Daniel, I know that, lately, the fighting on missions has gotten pretty intense, but the other things you do still matter."

"Even if that is true, there are plenty of other people who can do them. I'm not irreplaceable. I'm not even all that important. I would have left after Sha're died, if she hadn't pleaded with me to find her son. After we found him, I kept telling myself that I was staying for Sha're, that all the things I was doing were for her." Daniel's voice shook slightly. "But I just can't do it anymore, Jack. I don't have it in me." He turned away. "So, just go. Please."

Jack stood there, staring at Daniel's stiff back. He realized that nothing he said was going to change his friend's mind.

Feeling a sense of loss and defeat, the colonel turned away and walked to the door. With his hand on the knob, he decided to say one more thing.

"For the record, Daniel, you are dead wrong. You are important to the program. You always have been. I may not have told you that before, but I'm saying it now. And if you think that, next week, we'll have someone new on SG-1 who will slip right into your shoes, well . . . you're dead wrong about that, too."

That having been said, Jack opened the door and left.

* * *

Daniel wasn't really surprised when he answered the door again later that day and found Sam on the other side.

"Hey," the major greeted, looking a little nervous.

Saying nothing, Daniel stepped back for her to enter. He then followed her into the living room.

"Daniel—"

"Sam," he interrupted. "Before you say anything, I have to tell you that I've made up my mind. That's what I told Jack."

"I know he talked to you, Daniel, but I can't just stand back and let you leave without saying anything." Sam's eyes filled with sorrow and compassion. "I know how much you must be hurting, Daniel, and I am so sorry. But what happened wasn't your fault, and I know that Sarah wouldn't blame you."

Sam's statement made Daniel's pain grow even sharper, and he turned away.

"Please don't leave, Daniel. Without you there, nothing will be the same."

Daniel closed his eyes. "I'm sorry. I just can't stay." His voice dropped lower, filled with anguish. "I've lost my wife, I've lost two people who meant a lot to me, I've . . . I've lost myself. I wanted to help people, to make a difference, but what kind of difference have I made? How have I really helped? By killing people? Shifu tried to tell me that the path I was on wasn't the right one, but I didn't truly listen to him, not even after he gave me that dream." Sorrow and guilt filled his eyes. "I should have listened. I just can't keep doing it, Sam. There's just no point to it anymore. I have nothing left to give." His voice fell even lower. "I don't belong there. I never did."

Distressed by Daniel's statements, Sam whispered, "Oh, Daniel," tears filling her eyes.

"Please, Sam," Daniel pleaded. "I really need to be alone right now."

"No. I can't do that, Daniel. You're my friend, and I care about you. I can't see you feeling like this and just walk away."

A single tear fell in a slow trail down Daniel's cheek. The sight of that lone tear broke Sam's heart. She stepped forward and gathered him into a tight embrace. Daniel held on, clamping his eyes tightly shut against the other tears that were threatening to fall.

By the time the hug ended, Sam's face was wet with tears of her own. She wiped away the wetness and tried to look into Daniel's eyes, but he refused to meet her gaze.

"Please don't leave the program, Daniel," she pleaded. "If leaving SG-1 is what you need to do to feel better about yourself, then I understand. The colonel will, too. But please stay with the program. We need you there."

Daniel shook his head. "I can't, Sam. I'm sorry."

More tears came to Sam's eyes, but she held them back. "We're going to miss you," she told him in an unsteady voice, knowing that she needed to accept his decision.

"I'll miss you, too, Sam," Daniel murmured. At last, he lifted his head and met her eyes. "Don't worry about me. I'll be okay."

Sam searched the blue depths. "Will you?"

"Yeah. I just need time to sort things out and get my life back on track."

Sam wanted to believe what he was saying, that, with time to heal, he'd be fine. She decided to think positively. Daniel was the strongest person she'd ever met. He would get through this.

"Okay," she said. She gave his arm a little rub. "We'll talk later. All right?"

Daniel nodded, giving her a ghost of a smile. He held the smile as she went to the door, said goodbye, and left. As the door shut, the smile died.

* * *

The three members of SG-1 approached the door to Daniel's apartment. It had been eleven days since his resignation, and none of them had talked to him in that time. They had all agreed that they needed to give him some space and let him do a bit of healing first. But, today, Jack decided that they'd given him enough time alone, and they should go see how he was doing. The colonel was also secretly hoping that he could somehow talk the archeologist into coming back to the SGC and SG-1.

Putting it lightly, things were not going well with finding a replacement for Daniel. Jack kept putting it off, making one excuse after another until General Hammond finally put his foot down and told Jack to get it done or the general would do it for him. That was three days ago, and, after going through a mound of personnel files, Jack still hadn't found someone that he considered to be good enough. It's not that the candidates weren't all good military men and women. Most had excellent records. No, the problem was that they weren't Daniel.

When the threesome arrived at Daniel's apartment building, they saw that the linguist's car was gone. Sam had wanted them to come back later, but Jack insisted that they wait for Daniel's return inside his apartment.

"I don't feel right about this, sir," Sam said as they came to a stop before the door. "We should just call him and ask when we can come over."

"And have him tell us that now isn't a good time? It's time that we pull him out of this funk he's in. He's probably been sitting around the apartment most of this time, and we're going to get him out of there even if Teal'c has to toss him over his shoulder and carry him out."

Teal'c's eyebrow rose. "I do not intend to forcibly remove Daniel Jackson from his apartment, O'Neill."

"Okay, so we wouldn't actually do that, but I don't intend to let him keep wallowing."

Turning back to the door, Jack unlocked it and swung it open.

"Oh my God," Sam gasped, staring in utter shock at what lay beyond the open doorway. The apartment was completely empty, everything having been cleared out.

The three people stepped into the vacant apartment, hardly able to believe their eyes. Daniel had left, moved away without telling any of them that he was going. Why would he do that?

As Sam gazed about at the empty rooms, all the things Daniel had said returned to her mind, and she came to the horrible realization that she'd misread the seriousness of what he was feeling. Not only that, but she had failed to see that those feelings had been building for a long time now. Why hadn't any of them seen this? They were supposed to be his friends. How did they miss it?

That's when Sam realized the brutal truth. She hadn't seen it because she hadn't really been looking. The signs of Daniel's downward slide had been there for her to see, if she had just opened her eyes. She remembered how he used to be back in the early days, his passion to learn and see what was out there, the excitement and almost childlike wonder that often lit his eyes. How long had it been since she'd seen that? How long had it been since she'd seen a real smile on his face?

Guilt and shame hit Sam full force. They'd all been so focused on their own lives and troubles that they'd failed to see what was happening to Daniel even though it was right before their eyes. He'd been dying a slow death on the inside, and none of them had been paying any attention.

"This is our fault," she said, almost in tears.

"We didn't make him leave, Carter," Jack countered bitterly, angry that the man he'd considered to be his best friend had left without even saying goodbye.

"But we didn't look at him, Colonel, and see what was happening to him. You know what he told me when I came to talk to him? He said that there was no point to it anymore," tears welled in Sam's eyes, "that he had nothing left to give. I really think he believes that nothing he has done has mattered."

Sam's revelation made words come to Jack's mind, the memory of a voice speaking with utter despair.

_"None of it means anything. I try. It just goes away."_

Jack had believed that the things Daniel said on the day he almost committed suicide were just the result of his brain getting messed up by the addiction to the device in the Goa'uld pleasure palace, but what if it had been more than that? What if the addiction had merely unearthed feelings that were already inside Daniel?

Jack thought back to later words, ones spoken the day before Daniel resigned.

_"I've failed with everything."_

"Crap," Jack muttered, finally understanding what it was that his friend had been saying that day he nearly killed himself.

"We should have seen what was going on and done something," Sam said. "If I hadn't been so focused on myself and my job, I'd have seen that we were losing him."

The weight of regret settled upon Teal'c's shoulders. "My failure is even greater than yours, Major Carter. I saw the changes in Daniel Jackson's demeanor, yet I chose not to question them. I believed that he was merely adapting to his role as a warrior in our fight against the Goa'uld."

Jack was really beginning to see how much he'd failed his friend, how much he had blinded himself to all this time.

Sam's eyes met his. "We have to find him, sir."

"Yeah, we do. Let's get back to the base."

Upon returning to the base, Jack tried to call Daniel's cell phone. The message that the number was no longer in service gave them all a sinking feeling. He then got on the phone to the postal service.

"He didn't leave a forwarding address," he announced as he hung up a few minutes later. "His mail was put on hold."

"The post office won't hold mail indefinitely," Sam said. "I think the maximum is thirty days, unless you make special arrangements for it to be longer."

"The point is that we're not going to find out that way where he's gone. The hold started four days ago, so he hasn't been gone for long."

Sam turned to her computer. "I'll check the flights out of Colorado Springs and Denver."

The check revealed that Daniel had not flown out of either airport, which meant that he was probably traveling by car. Though she felt like it was an invasion of Daniel's privacy, Sam then checked something else. What she learned worried all of them even more. Though Daniel's bank accounts had not been closed, several thousand dollars had been withdrawn. Why he'd choose to carry around that much money instead of using his ATM card could mean that he didn't want anyone to trace his whereabouts. And if Daniel didn't want to be found, he was definitely smart enough to know how to cover his tracks.

Sam and Jack continued the search. They learned that Daniel had told his landlord about the move two days after his resignation and had given the man enough money to pay the final electric, phone and Internet bills. The archeologist didn't tell the landlord where he was going.

On a hunch, they checked with Salvation Army and Goodwill and learned that the two organizations had picked up large donations of furniture, household items, and other things from Daniel's address. It was that final thing that really drove home the truth.

"He gave everything away," Sam said with a sick feel in her stomach. "He's never coming back, is he."

Jack didn't reply. They should have gone to see Daniel sooner. If they had, they'd have caught him before he left. Now, Daniel was out there somewhere, and they had no idea where.

"Is there not a way to find Daniel Jackson's vehicle?" Teal'c asked. "On television, I have heard of things called APB and BOLO."

"APB means All Points Bulletin and BOLO stands for Be On The Lookout," Sam explained. "But either one of those things would have to be done through the police."

Jack got to his feet. "We need to tell General Hammond what's going on."

The general was dismayed by what he was told, but regretfully said that they could not involve the police in this matter unless there was evidence that Daniel's life was at risk.

"Then what about the military?" Jack asked. "I've got some contacts I can call. They might be able to dig up things we can't."

"Jack," the general said gently. "Daniel made the decision to do this, and we have to respect that. He chose to leave, and, for whatever reason, does not want us to find him. But there's something you need to keep in mind, and that's the kind of man he is. He knows that we will be worried about him, so, when he is ready, I feel certain that he will contact us. You said that he took just a few thousand dollars from his bank account. That alone is evidence that he doesn't plan on disappearing forever. We just have to be patient and wait for him to reach out to us."

The three members of SG-1 silently returned to Sam's lab.

"I don't know what to do," the major confessed.

"General Hammond is correct," Teal'c responded. "Daniel Jackson is a man of honor. He would not leave and never let us know what has become of him. I feel confident that he will contact us in time."

"And, in the meantime, he's out there somewhere, in anything but a good frame of mind," Jack said.

"Something could happen to him, and we might never know," Sam added, getting even more upset.

Cursing the day that Bra'tac came and told them about the Goa'uld meeting, Jack silently said, _'Daniel, you had better contact us soon or I swear that I'm going to hunt you down and beat you senseless, no matter what I have to do to find you.'_

* * *

Daniel looked out the airplane window at the city they were approaching, memories of the last time he'd seen it coming to his mind.

"Well, there it is," the man sitting across from him said. "So, how does it feel to be back here after all these years?"

"It feels good," Daniel replied, choosing, out of necessity, not to tell his traveling companion that he had actually been here only a little over a year ago. Unlike that time, this time should be much more pleasant.

Cairo. Just the name of the city brought a flood of memories. Too big, crowded and noisy, it had never been one of Daniel's favorite cities in Egypt, but he still had some fond memories of the place. He used to have friends who lived there. He wondered if any of them were still around.

As the private plane prepared to land, Daniel thought about what had led up to this moment. After resigning from the Stargate Program, he'd had no idea what he was going to do with the rest of his life. There was one thing, however, that he did know, and that's that, whatever it was going to do, it would not be in Colorado Springs. He needed to go someplace where he could start fresh. He'd come to that conclusion during the first long, sleepless night after his resignation.

In the vision that Sha're sent to him, he had planned on going off and finding a dig somewhere far away, but, in the real world, Daniel had known that might not be possible. Would there be digs out there that would accept a crackpot archeologist who posited the theory that the pyramids were landing platforms for alien spacecraft? There would be no way to know unless he tried.

He decided to send off an email to a colleague he'd known at UCLA, the very man who was sitting across from him now. He and Simon Farmer had talked from time to time over the past few years, though not very often. Simon had a lot of connections in the archeological community, so Daniel had known that, if there was any dig out there that would accept his participation, Simon would know about it.

It turned out that Simon did know about a dig being led by an old friend of Daniel's. Simon contacted her right away, and she welcomed Daniel to join them. It also turned out that Simon would be flying out to Cairo in a few days with a friend who had his own plane. He invited Daniel to tag along and save himself the airfare. That, however, meant that Daniel had to make some quick decisions. He would be remaining on the dig until it the spring, and there would be no point in keeping his apartment for all that time since he was planning on moving anyway. The problem was that he wouldn't have much time to pack up and move out all his stuff and make the drive to Los Angeles.

As Daniel looked around at his things, he had realized that, with the exception of his books, a few personal mementos, and the artifacts, none of them meant anything to him. So why keep them? He could always get more furniture and household stuff once he found a place to live next summer.

Making a sudden decision, Daniel called his landlord and told the man that he was moving out, glad that he was not tied into a lease. By the following afternoon, all the things that he'd decided to keep had been packed up in boxes. He got on the phone to some of the places that accepted donations of furniture, clothing and other things and arranged for them to come pick up what was left.

During this whole process, Daniel had been wondering what to do about his ex-teammates. His conscience was telling him that he needed to go see them, but he wasn't sure if he was up to dealing with what that would lead to: the sorrow on Sam's face as she pleaded with him to stay, Jack not understanding and accusing him of running away.

In the end, Daniel decided to send them a letter explaining everything and letting them know where he'd be and how they could contact him. He mailed the letter the day he left for L.A., and they should have gotten it the next day. He'd chosen to send it to the SGC instead of to either Jack or Sam's house since the letter was for all of them. Daniel would almost be willing to bet a million bucks that, as soon as they got that letter, Jack tried to call his cell phone. If he hadn't canceled his service, he would probably have gotten an earful He did feel a little guilty about having told them in a letter instead of face to face, and he hoped that, when he returned to the States in the spring, they could all talk.

The thing was that if he'd made this decision two years ago, after Sha're's death, he probably would have told them in person, but he felt so much more isolated now. A big part of that was the deterioration of his relationship with Jack, the greater contention, the feeling that Jack looked at him as more of a pain in the ass than anything else.

His relationship with Sam had changed as well. Mostly gone were the times when they got together on a project or to simply chat about things. They really only got together now when it was with the rest of the team or occasionally in the commissary when they happened to be eating at the same time.

Of course, it took two to make a friendship, so Daniel knew that he was equally to blame for the state of his relationship with Jack and Sam. They'd drifted apart, and he'd made no effort to stop it from happening.

As for Teal'c, it's not like he and the Jaffa were ever the kind of friends who'd get together after work for pizza and beer, even if Teal'c did drink alcohol. Jack's relationship with Teal'c had always been closer, the two of them bonded by their identities as fellow warriors. Yet, even so, Daniel felt like his relationship with the Jaffa was stronger now than it was in the early days, perhaps because Teal'c was less the fierce, stoical warrior and Daniel was less the geeky academic. Out of all his former teammates, Teal'c was the one whom Daniel knew would most understand and accept his decision to leave.

The plane came into a landing and taxied over to where Daniel would disembark. He and Simon rose to their feet.

"You said that someone from the dig was meeting you here," Simon said.

"Yeah, out front."

"You want us to hang around until they show, just in case? Jeff and I will be taking the plane over to the hangers before we go do our things."

"No, that's not necessary. If something came up and there was a delay, I'll figure something out."

Simon held out his hand. "Well, Daniel, it was nice to see you again. Don't worry about your stuff or your car, they will be safe in my possession."

Daniel shook the proffered hand. "Thanks for keeping them for me. I appreciate it."

"No sweat. So, see you next spring. Have fun at the dig."

"Thanks. I will."

Daniel exited the plane into the warm Egyptian sunshine. After making his way through the airport, he went to the passenger loading and unloading area and looked around for his ride. Not seeing anyone who looked like they might be searching for him, he walked over to wait against one of the walls. He'd been there for only a couple of minutes when he heard a female voice call his name. He turned, and there she was.

After seven years, Helen Danson hadn't really changed all that much. There were a few more lines in the narrow, weathered face, and the short white hair was perhaps a little thinner, but she appeared to still be as energetic as ever as she strode purposefully toward him.

Helen Danson was one of the grande dames of archeology. Now in her mid-sixties, he had no doubt that she was as passionate about it as ever and probably would be until the day she died. She commanded a lot of respect in the archeological community, and, with her fiery temper and nearly encyclopedic knowledge of Egyptian history and mythology, few people dared to cross her or tell her she was wrong. Ironically, it was Daniel doing that very thing that attracted her attention to him.

He was a sophomore at UCLA when Helen lectured as a guest speaker there. During the lecture, she said something with which Daniel disagreed. Many probably would have remained silent, but not Daniel. So, there he was, a seventeen-year-old kid, daring to challenge the words of a woman who was already a legend in the archeological community and had decades of research that backed up her words. Of course she demanded that he support his statements with some kind of proof or logic, which he did to the best of his ability. All she said in response was that it was an interesting theory, then moved on with the rest of her lecture. Afterwards, however, she called for him to stay. Thinking that he'd gotten himself into trouble, he remained in his seat as the rest of the auditorium emptied, several students shooting him sympathetic glances.

Once the last student was gone, the woman called Daniel down to the podium. He could still remember every word of the conversation that followed.

_"So, what's your name?" Helen asked._

_"Daniel Jackson, ma'am."_

_"How old are you?"_

_"Seventeen."_

_"Freshman?"_

_"Sophomore."_

_"I see. So, Mister Jackson. What makes you think that you, a college sophomore, know more than people who have been studying archeology longer than you've been alive?"_

_Daniel felt his cheeks heat up. "I don't know more, ma'am."_

_"Oh, you don't? And yet you challenged a point I was presenting in my lecture."_

_"I-I just. . . ."_

_One of Helen's eyebrows rose. "Yes? Speak up, Mister Jackson."_

_Seeing the challenge in her eyes, Daniel straightened his spine. "I just think that it's wrong. My parents taught me to question things, not to accept something just because it was what everyone else believed. They published some pretty controversial theories that were later proved to be correct, and so have a lot of other people in the field."_

_Helen frowned. "Who are your parents?"_

_Daniel hesitated before replying. "Were. Melburn and Claire Jackson."_

_Helen's gaze softened a bit. "I never met them, but I knew of them. What happened to them was a terrible tragedy."_

_Daniel's gaze dropped to the floor, the pain of that loss still burning inside him after nine years._

_"Well, Mister Jackson. I've given what you said some thought, and . . . I believe that you may very well be right."_

_Daniel's head shot up. "Y-y-you do?"_

_"You made a valid argument and some very interesting and insightful points. I would like you to write a paper on this that includes your research and what made you start to believe that we have it wrong."_

_Daniel blinked a couple of times, his eyes wide. "Y-you would?"_

_And that's when Helen smiled, a smile that brightened her grey-blue eyes and made her thin, stern features soften._

_"So, how long do you think that will take you?" she asked._

_"I-I'm not sure. I could get started on it tonight."_

_"I'll be in town for the rest of the week. Do you think you can get it done by Friday?"_

_Daniel nodded. "Yes, ma'am, I think so."_

_"Good. I'll look forward to reading it."_

And that was the beginning. Helen was very impressed with the paper Daniel presented and took it upon herself to take him under her wing, though it was necessary to do so mostly long distance. When, after getting his doctorate in anthropology from UCLA, he chose to pursue doctorates in archeology and philology at the University of Chicago, it was she who told Doctor Jordan about him, the man who ultimately took over her duties as Daniel's mentor.

As the years passed, he and Helen stayed in touch as well as they could – that is until Daniel made the decision to go public with his radical theories and began breaking ties with close friends and colleagues so that he wouldn't drag them down in the mud with him if the archeological community completely rejected him.

And then came the job offer from Catherine Langford and the mission to Abydos. After Daniel returned to Earth, he thought about contacting Helen, but decided that perhaps it would be best if he didn't. The woman would have too many questions about what he'd been doing and what he was doing now, and, unlike people like Simon, she wouldn't be satisfied with vague answers.

Daniel still didn't know if it was a good idea to go on a dig where she'd be right there, asking him pointed questions about what he'd been up to the past six plus years. Whether or not it was, it was great to see her again, and it was going to be even better to work with her on a dig.

The white-haired woman came to a stop before him. "Daniel Jackson. My God. Look at you. Where did that silly mop of hair go? I barely recognize you."

Daniel smiled lightly. "Helen. It's good to see you. It's been too long."

"Yes, and whose fault is that? You disappear off the face of the Earth and never bother even to send me a letter in all this time."

"I'm sorry. My life sort of . . . went through some radical changes."

"Yes. Simon told me that you've been working for the government. I can't say that I was too pleased to hear that. But we can talk about that later. Come give me a hug."

The two shared a hug, then walked to her Land Rover.

"So, how was the flight?" Helen asked once they were on the road.

"A lot more pleasant than a commercial flight. I managed to get some sleep."

"Good, good. So . . . the government, eh?"

Ah, here it came. "Yes."

"Doing what exactly?"

"Linguist and cultural expert mostly. It paid well."

"Did you do things for the military, too?"

Daniel paused before replying. "Yes." He knew that the woman had a very low opinion of the military, not just that of the U.S., but of all countries.

Helen chose not to air her opinion about that. "And you've been doing that all this time?"

"No. I did one job for them that lasted a couple of weeks, then I was out of the country for over a year. When I got back, I was given a permanent job."

"But you've resigned now."

There was an even longer pause. "Yes, I've resigned."

Something in Daniel's tone made Helen glance at his profile. "I never pegged you as someone who would work for the government and the military."

"Well, at the time that I was offered the job, I . . . didn't really have any other prospects."

"Yes, I heard about you losing your grant and about the other things. I'm sorry about that. I can't say that I agree with your theories, but I also don't agree with the community giving you the cold shoulder like they did. That's the problem with so many archeologists. They get stuck in their beliefs about how things are and don't react well when someone challenges those beliefs."

"Well, what I was suggesting _was_ pretty radical."

Helen gave a very unladylike snort. "Radical? That's one word for it, dear boy. But you have as much right to your theories and beliefs as anybody else, so I'm certainly not going to throw stones."

"Thanks. I appreciate that. So, how have _you_ been doing?"

"Oh, can't complain, although this old body isn't as spry as it used to be. People keep telling me that I should retire. I tell them that I'll retire when I'm put in the ground."

Daniel smiled slightly, thinking that Helen really hadn't changed a bit.

Once they got to the dig site, Daniel was introduced to everyone. Based upon their reactions, a couple of the people clearly knew exactly who he was, but one look at Helen convinced them that it would be unwise to make any remarks.

Eager to jump right into work, Daniel asked Helen what she'd like him to do. She decided to have him work with her on one of the grids they'd just started excavating. She was more than a little curious about the work Daniel had been doing for the government and military and hoped to pry some details out of him.

It turned out that the prying wasn't very successful. All his answers to her questions were vague generalities, and every time Helen pushed him for more details, he said that he couldn't tell her more because it was classified. She did learn a few things, though. Among other things, Daniel apparently did a lot of traveling to different places in his job, and he'd been in dangerous situations more than once. He'd also acted as an unofficial diplomat on occasion, sometimes during those dangerous situations. She knew that there was more to it, a _lot_ more. In fact, there was no doubt in Helen's mind that what he'd told her so far was just the tip of the iceberg of what he had been doing all these years. Would she be able to get more out of him in the months to come. That she didn't know, but she was sure going to try.

* * *

You're probably all wondering now why Jack, Sam and Teal'c haven't gotten the letter Daniel sent. Well, you'll find out in the next chapter. ;-)


	3. Chapter 3

CHAPTER THREE

Jack speared angrily at the meatloaf on his plate. Though the present target of his ire, the unfortunate piece of meat was not the source of the emotion. That unenviable position belonged to Lieutenant Ted Gainsborough, the soon-to-be ex fourth member of SG-1. During the mission they'd just completed, Gainsborough managed to get the entire team trapped inside one of the structures in an abandoned city for six hours because he mistranslated some instructions. Jack had picked Gainsborough for the team because of his skill with languages, but he was obviously not skilled enough.

Gainsborough was the second person to be chosen to take Daniel's place on SG-1 and the second person to fall miserably short of filling the archeologist's shoes. The first person, Airman Greeley, lasted less than a week before asking to be transferred off the team, something to which Jack was quite happy to agree. If Jack had his way, Gainsborough's time on the team would be almost as short.

It had been three weeks since Daniel's "disappearance", and not a word had been heard from him. Jack was worried, and he knew that Sam was, too. Teal'c probably was as well. He just hadn't said so.

Sam was periodically checking Daniel's bank account to see if there had been any activity and had been searching for other signs of where he might be, but he seemed to have dropped off the face of the Earth. There was a chance that, if they involved others in the search, they'd have more luck, but they couldn't do that without Hammond's okay.

Nothing had been the same since Daniel's departure. The team didn't get together in the commissary for meals very much anymore, and, when they did, there was little conversation. Sam seemed to be working even longer hours, Teal'c had gone back to frowning a lot, and Jack spent more time aimlessly wandering the corridors of Stargate Command. All of them avoided going to Level 18. Jack had insisted that Daniel's office be closed and left the way it was, and General Hammond had humored him, though it was only a matter of time before the general said that they could no longer afford to leave the space unused. Jack's motives for closing the room were simple: the hope that Daniel would suddenly return, wanting his job back. The colonel knew that it was probably a foolish hope, but he wasn't willing to let go of it yet.

At least one fortunate thing had happened – well, fortunate for SG-1, that is. A mission to a world named Kelowna resulted in them finding out about a mineral on the planet that was called Naquadria, which was similar to but much more powerful than Naquadah. Recognizing the possible importance of the mineral, the brass decided that a trade agreement should be attempted. A few discussions with the Kelownans took place, and the situation looked promising. SG-1 was scheduled to return to the planet, but the mission was delayed because of Airman Greeley's request for a transfer. When they finally attempted to dial the gate to Kelowna, they couldn't get a lock. Several more attempts had the same result. Wondering what had happened, the SGC contacted the Tok'ra and asked them if they could check out the planet. The Tok'ra did so, and what they reported chilled everyone to the bone. Some kind of explosion had destroyed a huge chunk of one of the continents. Based upon their report of the area of devastation, Sam said that not even a Naquadah bomb would have done that much damage. However, an explosion involving Naquadria might have. If SG-1 had gone on the mission at the scheduled time, they would have been caught in the blast. The bigwigs were mourning the loss of the Naquadria, but Jack was just grateful that he and his team were alive.

Tomorrow was Thanksgiving, a holiday that none of them intended to celebrate. Jack had made an oath that, if they didn't hear from Daniel on that day, he was going to talk to the general and ask that they be allowed to mount a full-scale search for the archeologist. He'd beg if he had to.

Finally deciding that he'd tortured the meatloaf enough, Jack got up and dumped his mostly uneaten dinner in the trash. He really should just go home.

Deciding to do that, Jack headed for the elevator. He was almost there when he heard his name being called. He turned to see a young airman coming toward him, holding an envelope. For some reason, the man looked a little nervous.

"Um . . . sir, the staff that handles the incoming mail was rearranging some things in the office, and they found a few letters that had fallen behind one of the file cabinets. This . . . was one of them."

Jack took the letter from the man's hand. When he saw the name on the return address, he started shouting.

"How the hell did this happen? How long has this been sitting behind that file cabinet?"

"T-t-the postmark says it was mailed three weeks ago, sir."

"Dammit!"

Jack stormed away from the cowering airman and finished his journey to the elevator. He took it up to Level 19 and strode into Sam's lab.

"This was just found collecting dust behind a file cabinet," Jack announced as he tossed the letter onto the worktable in front of her.

Sam gasped when she saw who had sent it.

"He mailed it three weeks ago, Carter, on the day he left town."

"Oh my God. All this time, we thought he'd left without saying anything."

"It's addressed to all of us. I'll call Teal'c. He needs to be here when we read it."

As soon as Teal'c arrived and was filled in on what happened, Sam opened the letter and began reading it aloud.

_Dear Jack, Sam and Teal'c,_

When I resigned, I really didn't know what I was going to do with my life. I just knew that I could no longer keep working for the program when it felt like I never really belonged there and that there simply was no point in staying, not when I wasn't accomplishing much of anything, at least nothing of consequence.

I've come to the realization that I cannot stay here in Colorado Springs. I need to get away from here, start fresh. I contacted a friend and former colleague in Los Angeles named Simon Farmer, and he told me about a dig in Egypt that's being run by an old friend of mine. They've welcomed me to join the dig. By the time you get this letter, I'll be on the road to L.A.

I know how sudden this may seem, but, as luck would have it, Simon is going to be flying to Cairo on the 2nd with a friend of his in the guy's private plane, and he invited me to join them. I've given up my apartment. Since I was going to be moving anyway, I didn't see any point in keeping it for the five months that I'll be at the dig. Even if I'd had time to do it, I didn't see much sense in putting all my stuff in storage, so I gave most of it away. I guess I'll be doing a whole lot of shopping when I get back and find a place to live.

I'm sorry that I'm telling this to you in a letter. I should have let you know in person. But I have a pretty good idea how a couple of you would have reacted, and I just didn't feel capable of dealing with that. I hope you can forgive me. When I return, we can talk, that is if you even want to speak to me. You probably think that I'm acting rashly. Maybe I am. I just feel like I have to do this. I have to get as far away from the program and everything else as I can and try to find what I've lost. Whether or not I'll find it in Egypt is something I don't know. I'll try to write to you guys, but I can't promise when that will be. Once I get on the dig, I'll probably be pretty busy.

Included with this letter is information on where the dig is and how you can contact me. If any of you feel like writing me letters, you can send them to that address.

Well, I guess that's really all I have to say. I'm going to miss you guys. I'll be thinking about you on Thanksgiving and Christmas. Please say goodbye to Janet, Cassie and General Hammond for me.

_Daniel_

There was a long moment of silence, each of the three people lost in thought over what the letter had said.

"I'm flying out there," the colonel abruptly announced. The other two people looked at him. "I doubt I'll be able to get him to come back, but at least I can try knocking some sense into him. How the hell he thinks that he never did anything of value here is beyond me."

"Indeed," Teal'c agreed. "Daniel Jackson has accomplished many great things."

"We'd all be dead if it wasn't for him," Sam said. Her expression firmed. "I'm coming with you."

"As am I."

Jack nodded sharply. "Right. Let's go talk to Hammond."

The general was appalled when he found out about the lost letter and declared that he'd make sure something like that never happened again. SG-1's request for leave so that they could go see Daniel didn't surprise him. He granted it, recognizing that the three of them needed to do this, both for Daniel's sake and their own.

"When you see him, I'd like you to pass on a message from me," he said. "Tell him that his resignation was far from inconsequential, that his loss to the program was a loss to all of us, not just to his friends and to Earth, but to the galaxy and our fight against the Goa'uld."

With a nod, Jack said, "We will, sir."

* * *

A slight frown on her face, Helen stood under the shade of the tent and watched the man who was carefully brushing dirt away from a broken jar. The frown was not because he was doing something wrong. On the contrary, it was obvious that Daniel had not lost any of his archeological skills during his years working for the government, and he was as brilliant as ever. In fact, he seemed to have added substantially to his depth of knowledge and understanding of ancient Egypt, particularly regarding its mythology. The same was true for his knowledge of several other cultures as well.

No, the reason for the frown was that there was something very wrong with this man Helen had taken under her wing eighteen years ago. He was no longer the same lively young man with a passionate, unstoppable drive for knowledge that he used to be. It would stand to reason that, with the added years of maturity, there would be some differences in him, but the differences were monumental. In all the time he'd been here, she had not seen even one real smile, one moment when his eyes lit with the passion that she used to see so often. It was as if something had died deep inside him – or been killed. Helen didn't know what had happened to him to cause such a radical change, but she was pretty sure she knew who to blame for it.

Helen saw Greg Jenkins walk up to Daniel, and the two talked for a moment. Daniel nodded and got to his feet, brushing off his pants. Greg turned to Helen.

"We're off to Cairo, Helen. Are you sure you don't want to come?"

"Not this trip, Greg. Just don't forget the coffee like you did last time."

The man laughed. "Are you kidding me? There's no way Daniel would let me forget that." He gave her a jaunty wave. "See you later."

The two men got in the Land Rover and drove off.

When, an hour later, Helen heard an approaching vehicle, she thought that Daniel and Greg had forgotten something and were returning. However, when she took a look, she saw that it was someone else. Not recognizing the vehicle, she headed toward it. It came to a stop just outside the dig site, and three people got out, two men and a woman.

"May I help you?" Helen asked.

"We're looking for Daniel Jackson," the grey-haired man replied. "We're friends of his."

"Friends?" Helen looked at the three people more closely. She wasn't sure about the woman, but something about the two men screamed "military", especially the big, dark-skinned man, who stood ramrod straight, his face schooled into a calm, expressionless mask.

Helen's eyes narrowed. "You're military."

"Yes, ma'am," the grey-haired man confirmed. "I'm Colonel Jack O'Neill, this is Major Samantha Carter, and this is, uh, Sergeant Murray . . . Jaffe."

"May we talk to Daniel?" Sam asked.

"He's not here." Helen told her. "He's in Cairo on a supply run. He won't be back until late this afternoon."

Hearing the note of hostility in her voice, Jack subjected her to a long look. "Is there some problem?"

"As a matter of fact, there is. I don't like the military. From my experience, they really only know how to do one thing, and that's to kill and destroy, cities, lives, and, apparently, souls as well. I don't know exactly what it is that you people did to Daniel, but whatever it was, it killed a big chunk of his soul."

An expression of worry filled the blue eyes of the major. "Did something happen? Is he all right?"

"Physically, he's fine, but that's just about the only way that he _is_ fine."

The new arrivals all exchanged a look.

"Daniel suffered some personal loses lately," Jack explained. "A friend of his was killed a short while ago, and he lost another friend last year. His wife died two years ago."

"Yes, I know about his wife. It's one of the few personal things I managed to get out of him. But there's more wrong with him than that. I've known Daniel since he was seventeen years old, and I hardly recognize him. He used to be filled with spirit and passion, and, now, it's like he's just existing."

Sam, Jack and Teal'c were all distressed by what they were hearing. They had hoped that Daniel's time on the dig would have helped to heal his emotional wounds, but if what this woman was saying was true, Daniel was no better than he'd been when he resigned.

"I have half a mind to order you off this dig," Helen told them, "but if you really are Daniel's friends, he might like to see you, so I'll let you stay. You can wait for him in that tent over there." She waved her hand at one of the tents. "Just stay out of the excavation areas. We don't need you traipsing about and stepping on something."

The woman turned her back to them and marched away.

The three teammates grabbed their bags from their vehicle and went to the tent. It had four cots, a matching number of folding chairs, and a small table with a lantern. They each picked a cot and set their bags down.

"I'm worried about Daniel," Sam said.

"Ah, she's just exaggerating, Carter," Jack told her. "I mean, how long has it been since she saw him last? Of course he's changed since then. Daniel's probably fine."

"I hope so."

* * *

The look on Helen's face when she came up to Daniel told him that something was up. He and Greg had just gotten back from Cairo and were getting ready to unload the supplies they'd gotten.

"You have some visitors," Helen announced.

Daniel frowned in puzzlement. "Visitors?"

Helen's expression darkened even more. "They're from the military, although they claim that they're your friends."

Daniel's expression was now one of surprise. "Jack, Sam and . . . and Murray?"

"That's their names. They're in the guest tent."

Wondering why his former teammates were there, Daniel went to the tent. When he opened the flap and the three people inside saw him, they got to their feet.

"Um . . . hi," Daniel greeted with mixed emotions. It was nice to see them, but he didn't understand why they'd come. Had something happened?

Sam came forward and gave him a hug. "It's so wonderful to see you," she said as she drew away.

"You too, but why are you guys here. Not that it isn't great, but it's sort of a long way to come."

"Well, you know that letter you sent us?" Jack asked. "We only just got it a few days ago."

"What? But why? I sent it on the day I left."

"It fell behind some damn file cabinet."

"We've been worried sick about you," Sam told Daniel. "We didn't know where you were or why you left without saying anything. We tried to find you, but we couldn't find any trace of you."

Daniel was dismayed by the news. "I'm sorry. If I'd had any idea, I'd have contacted you."

"It wasn't your fault," Jack told him, deciding not to say that Daniel should have said goodbye in person. The guy didn't need to hear that. "Anyway, we all decided to come see you. We've met the pit bull, by the way."

Daniel smiled ever so slightly. "That's Helen Danson. She's never been fond of the military."

Jack's next words were dripping in sarcasm. "No, really? I'd never have guessed."

Sam searched her friend's face closely. "How are you doing?"

"Good. It's nice doing something that doesn't involve risking life and limb."

Jack subjected the archeologist to a probing stare. "The pit bull gave us the impression that you haven't exactly been a very happy-go-lucky guy."

Daniel's eyes immediately fell to the ground, and all three of his former teammates saw the walls go up.

"I've just changed a lot since she saw me last," he said. "I was a lot younger then, and . . . a lot of things have happened." He looked at his watch. "It'll be dark soon. Have you eaten? They'll be serving dinner over in the big tent in a bit."

Even a fool could see that Daniel was attempting to evade questions about how he was doing emotionally. Deciding that perhaps they should back off for a while, the members of SG-1 accepted his invitation.

Over a surprisingly tasty meal the old friends talked. Since stuff about what was going on at the base couldn't be discussed in public, the conversation mostly revolved around what Jack, Sam and Teal'c had been doing personally and things that had been going on back in the States in general.

"How's Janet?" Daniel asked.

"She's good," Sam answered.

"I think she misses having you around to poke and prod," Jack added. "Things just aren't as exciting around the infirmary without you there, although Siler's been getting into all kinds of interesting predicaments."

"I can't really say that spending time in the infirmary is something I miss," Daniel remarked.

Jack couldn't stop himself from saying the next words. "Is there anything you _do_ miss?"

Again, Daniel's gaze dropped. Obviously feeling uncomfortable, he replied, "I miss you guys."

"But that's all?"

Daniel looked at him. "What do you want me to say, Jack? You know how I feel about . . . everything else." He shook his head. "We shouldn't be talking about this here."

Everyone fell silent and focused on eating. Once they'd finished and were heading out of the tent, Jack noticed Helen glaring at him. Oh, yeah. No love lost there.

They stepped out into the cool desert air.

"We need to talk, Daniel," Jack said.

The archeologist let out a sigh. He'd known that, sooner or later they would have to talk about this, but he hadn't expected that time to come so soon. He really didn't feel up to it, but he did owe it to these three people.

"Come with me," he said. He led his ex-teammates out of the camp and up a low rise. When they got to the top, Sam caught her breath at the sight before them. An extensive ruin lay in the distance, looking strange and mysterious in the moonlight.

"Wow," the astrophysicist murmured.

"It was discovered around twenty years ago and has been under continual excavation since then," Daniel said. "We still don't know what its original purpose was, although it looks like, over the centuries, it was used for a lot of different things. It was apparently continually added onto over a wide span of time. I was able to spend a little bit of time there, and I'd love to spend more." He sighed. "Unfortunately, I'm not really welcome there. The ones in charge of the dig know who I am and . . . don't have a very high opinion of me."

Daniel's friends all heard the tone of sad resignation in his voice and shared a look.

"General Hammond asked us to pass on a message from him," Jack said. "He said to tell you that you leaving the program was a big loss to all of us, to the whole galaxy, in fact."

"I'm flattered that he'd say that, but me not being in the program isn't going to make a difference to the galaxy or even to Earth."

"But you being in the program has made a difference in the past," Sam insisted. "What about when you went to that alternate universe and got the gate address that allowed us to stop Apophis' fleet? Earth would have been destroyed if it hadn't been for you, just like it was in those other universes because you weren't there."

Daniel shook his head. "Since I'm partly to blame for us being in that predicament, that doesn't really count."

"How the hell do you figure that?" Jack asked.

"If I hadn't unburied the gate on Abydos, you would never have known about the map room or that there were other Stargates. You would have continued to believe that Abydos was the only one and never gone anywhere else. The other Goa'uld wouldn't have even found out that it was us who killed Ra, so Earth wouldn't have been a target."

"I don't think you're right about that, Daniel," Sam responded. "When Apophis came through the gate, we all assumed that he came through the Abydos gate. We'd still have sent a probe through to Abydos—"

"A box of Kleenex," Daniel interrupted.

Sam blinked in surprise. "What?"

"Jack sent a box of Kleenex. General Hammond was originally going to send a nuke, then decided on a probe. Jack decided that Kleenex would be better."

Sam looked at her C.O., and he shrugged.

"The Kleenex was cheaper."

Sam paused before continuing. "Um . . . okay." She turned back to Daniel. "Regardless of what we sent, it would have been flattened upon reaching the other side. When that happened, we'd have started to wonder what was going on, where Apophis came from. Sure, back when you and I first met, I believed that our gate only went to Abydos, but that opinion would have eventually changed, as it would have for others. Both of the Stargate Programs in the alternate realities we've encountered didn't have you to remind them of stellar drift; they thought of it themselves. We would have, too, in time. And, like them, we would have figured out how to calculate the locations of other planets. We would have gotten out there in the galaxy at a later date, but we would still have gotten out there, which means that, sooner or later, we'd have been targeted. And we wouldn't have had you to give us what we needed to save Earth."

"And I would have remained in the service of Apophis," Teal'c stated.

"Frankly, Daniel. I don't know how you can think that you never did anything of consequence," Jack said. "That is just plain stupid. Carter and I would have been frozen popsicles in Antarctica if you hadn't figured out where we were."

Sam nodded. "The Tollans would have been taken away by Maybourne."

"We may not have discovered the location of Setesh and destroyed him," Teal'c said.

"We'd probably have made the deal with those racist clones," said Jack.

"Either the Gadmeer or the Enkarans would have been destroyed," Sam reminded the archeologist.

Teal'c spoke next. "We would likely not have discovered the truth about the Aschen."

"You know, the three of us could keep right on going with this," Jack said, "but we shouldn't have to. Any sane, rational person could see that you did important things while you were there. Why you can't see it is a mystery to me."

Daniel appreciated what his friends were trying to do, but he couldn't escape the belief that he hadn't done enough.

"Sure, I got that gate address," he said, "but that was just a case of sheer dumb luck, and I wasn't the one who destroyed Apophis' ships. All I did was manage to get myself shot. Maybe I did do something good every now and then, but nothing I've ever done seems to have changed anything, not to the big picture, and most of what I've done probably would have worked out okay anyway or been done by someone else." Daniel turned toward the camp. "There are some things I have to do before I go to bed. I'll be getting up early." He glanced at the others. "You guys are welcome to stay a couple of days, if you want to, although there won't be much for you to do around here. I'll, uh . . . see you in the morning."

Not waiting for them to say anything, Daniel headed back down the hill.

"Daniel Jackson is unable to see the truth of our words," Teal'c said. "He believes that his accomplishments were insufficient."

Sam sadly watched Daniel disappear into his tent. "I don't know what we can do to make him change his mind."

"Well, it's obvious that nothing we say is going to do the trick," Jack responded. "He's being as pig-headed as ever. You know what we need right now? Clarence. He made George Bailey see the light. I bet he could do the same for Daniel. I think giving Daniel a little look into what things would be like if he was never born would do the trick."

Teal'c looked at him. "You speak of the movie 'It is a Wonderful Life'."

"'It's', Teal'c, not 'It is', and, yes, that's what I'm talking about. Too bad there are no angels around lookin' to earn their wings when you need one."

Not knowing what else to do, the three teammates returned to camp, hoping that, somehow, they'd be able to make their friend see the truth about himself.

* * *

By the time SG-1 went to breakfast the next morning, Daniel had been hard at work for over an hour. After the meal, they went in search of him and found him at a table, tagging and cataloging artifacts.

"Where will all these things go?" Sam asked, bending down to study a small statue that was missing most of its left arm.

"Eventually, some will be displayed in museums," Daniel answered, "the better pieces. The rest will be stored someplace."

Jack reached out to pick up a cracked bowl, but Daniel stopped him.

"I wouldn't do that, if I were you," the archeologist warned. He jerked his head toward something off to the right, and Jack turned to see Helen glaring daggers at him. The colonel quickly returned his hand to his side, not wanting the "pit bull" to bite it off.

"So, what's her problem with the military?" he asked.

"There are a lot of reasons for it, some of them very personal. She's seen a lot of terrible things perpetrated by the military and governments of many different countries, not just acts against people, but also priceless works of art destroyed or confiscated."

"Okay, but, no matter what she's seen or experienced, it doesn't mean that every military is bad or that everyone in the military is no good."

"No, but she's had a lot more bad experiences than good ones." Daniel's lips twitched upward slightly. "But don't worry, Jack. She won't pull out her gun unless you break something."

"She has a gun?"

"Oh, yes. She's kept one under her pillow ever since thieves snuck onto a dig one night and tried to steal some of the artifacts."

"You know, the thought of a gun in that woman's hands makes me more nervous than an attacking army of Jaffa."

"She would indeed be quite formidable if armed," Teal'c agreed.

"Yeah. I bet Bra'tac would just love her."

After finishing what he was doing, Daniel headed off to one of the excavation grids, choosing one at the far end of the dig when Jack insisted on accompanying him despite the archeologist's warning that if he started whining about being bored, Daniel would have him booted out.

For the next hour, which felt like three times that long to the silently bored colonel, Jack watched as Daniel and another man slowly and painstakingly uncovered bits and pieces of artifacts, each one treated like it was of great value, even the little shards of pottery that, to Jack, appeared to be worthless. After an hour, the other man was called away, leaving Daniel and Jack alone, none of the nearby grids presently having anyone working on them.

"So, is this what you're planning on doing for the rest of your life?" the leader of SG-1 asked.

Ignoring the tone of the man's question, Daniel replied, "Not exactly. I'll be staying with the dig until April, then going back to the States to find a place to live and some kind of job. I haven't figured out yet what that job will be, although Simon said that he could probably get me a teaching position at one of the smaller colleges in L.A. I might decide to come back to the dig next fall."

"So, teaching and digging in the dirt. Not quite as big and important as saving Earth and the galaxy from evil aliens."

Daniel sighed loudly. "Just leave it alone, Jack."

"I can't do that, Daniel. Obviously, you're bound and determined to believe that your contributions to the program weren't very important, but you can't possibly think that anything you do here or standing before some classroom will be more important than helping us fight the Goa'uld."

Daniel stared at him angrily. "I know that, Jack. I know that, on a galactic scale, being a teacher or being an archeologist on some dig isn't as important as what the program does, but that the whole point. The program _is_ big and _is_ important, and, during all those years I was at the SGC, I wanted to help change things for the better, to make a difference, but what difference did I make? Every Goa'uld I helped kill was just replaced by another. I may have aided some civilizations, but how many others did I help damage or even destroy? Remember Cimmeria? I destroyed Thor's Hammer, and, because of it, hundreds of their people were killed by the Goa'uld. I wanted to help people, Jack. I wanted to make things better, but I failed. I have no grand illusions that what I'm doing now will help the galaxy nor even Earth, but at least I won't be disappointed in myself when I have no high hopes for what I can accomplish. And, as a teacher and archeologist, I'll no longer be destroying things and taking lives."

Rising to his feet, Daniel strode away. Jack got up as well, thinking of following him, but he was stopped by the appearance of a third person.

"Why can't you just leave him alone?" Helen asked angrily, having seen the altercation between Jack and Daniel. She hadn't heard their words, but she'd watched Daniel's body language and seen the look on his face as he all but ran away. "Haven't you people done enough to him?"

"Now, look," Jack said, not in the mood to take any more from this woman. "Daniel said that you had a lot of reasons to hate the military, but we are not the enemy. You don't know what this is all about. Yeah, you knew Daniel years ago, but you know next to nothing about his life for the past six years."

"Then tell me what it is that did so much damage to his psyche. If it wasn't working for the government and the military, then what was it? What leached the spirit, and heart, and passion out of him?"

Because of the classified nature of the job, Jack couldn't answer her question, and, even if he could, it would just reinforce her belief that the military was to blame, since, in a way, it was. Daniel was a man of peace, but his position on SG-1 had made it necessary for him to kill and destroy. He wanted to help people, yet, through unfortunate circumstances, had often been involved in causing harm instead, most devastating of all being his part in the deaths of the two people he'd wanted to save more than any other. He had been desperately trying to make a difference in their war against the Goa'uld, but saw every gain as only temporary.

Jack knew that third feeling all too well. Over the past couple of years, he had been feeling pretty much the same way, that they were fighting a battle in which they were making little to no headway. Because of that, he had been letting his military side take over more. Do anything it takes to destroy the enemy and win. Don't question whether or not it's right or if there's a better way. The events with the Eurondans last year was a prime example. He wanted that technology no matter what, and he didn't want to see that what Daniel was saying was right and made sense. He did it again with the Gadmeer. Daniel wanted to find a peaceful solution, but Jack didn't have the patience for that. His solution was to destroy them.

And that was another part of the problem, a part in which Jack could take a big chunk of the blame. Not only was Daniel struggling to make things better, he was repeatedly having to butt heads with the military way of thinking as he did it, most often from Jack. Instead of supporting his friend, Jack argued with him, becoming one of the primary forces in Daniel being made to do things that were against his principles.

Given all of this, was it any wonder why Daniel felt like he didn't belong, why being on SG-1 and working for the program had been slowly chipping away at his soul?

Not answering Helen's question, Jack turned away and walked in the opposite direction Daniel had taken. He returned to the place he and the others went last night. In the daylight, the ruins looked different. He could see the tents of the camp, a camp full of people going about their job of uncovering history, blissfully unaware that the history they believed they were revealing wasn't the whole truth.

After about ten minutes, Jack was joined by Teal'c.

"Carter was right," the colonel said. "This thing with Daniel _is_ our fault, and not just because we failed to see what was happening to him."

"You believe that we are responsible for Daniel Jackson's feelings of inadequacy."

"Not just us, Teal'c, but the whole program. We turned him into a warrior, something he never wanted to be. Think about what he did before he joined the program. What do archeologists, anthropologists and linguists do?"

Sam, who had been coming up the hill and heard what Jack said answered the question. "Archeologists uncover history and preserve it for future generations. Anthropologists study people and cultures to expand our knowledge of humanity. Linguists study languages for the same reasons, to expand our knowledge and reveal our history."

"They are all things that teach and preserve," Teal'c said, "peacefully contributing to the betterment of mankind."

"Exactly," Jack agreed. "That's who Daniel is inside; that's what he's always wanted to do. But then he gets involved in the program, and what happens? In the beginning, he could still do those things. We discover those Mongol people, and Daniel gets to help make things better for them. We go to the Land of Light, and the same thing happens, plus Daniel learns things about their culture. The same goes for Argos, the Tollans, the people that the Keeper was lying to about the state of their planet, heck, even the miners on that planet with that cursed sarcophagus who now have a better life because Daniel took the time and effort to talk some sense into a woman he should have hated for what she did to him."

"It would be like a dream come true for many archeologists and anthropologists," Sam said, "being given the opportunity to discover and learn so much about so many people and cultures."

"Yeah, but then things started to change. It became less discovery, learning, and helping and more killing and destroying, and no matter how hard Daniel kept trying to help people, to do good out there in the galaxy, it just wasn't enough anymore."

The picture suddenly became so clear to Sam. "Why didn't we ever realize this before?" she asked in an anguished voice.

"Because we're military, because Daniel was good at pretending that he was okay . . . because we never bothered to really think about it. We expected him to adapt and not have a problem with it. That's the military way of thinking. Suck up, do what you're ordered, and put your feelings on a shelf somewhere." Jack looked over his shoulder and spied the figure of his friend. "Maybe Daniel _is_ better off here, where he can be himself rather than what we forced him into being." He turned back around and, in a voice tinged with sad acceptance, said, "We need to let him go."


	4. Chapter 4

CHAPTER FOUR

When Daniel saw his former teammates packing their stuff into their vehicle, he was more than a little surprised. He walked over to the car.

"Guys?" he inquired, his tone hesitant and questioning.

"It's time for us to go home, Daniel," Jack said. "We wanted you to come back to the SGC, but that isn't what you want, and it's time for us to accept that."

"We want you to be happy, Daniel," Sam said, her eyes full of regret and sorrow. "We're so sorry about everything."

Taken completely by surprise by the sudden about-face, Daniel tried to switch mental gears. Though he had wanted his friends to accept his decision, he'd been certain that they'd keep trying to get him to come back. Now that they were actually choosing to accept that he wasn't ever going to come back, he wasn't quite sure what to say.

"I . . . I'm not sure what to say. Thank you, I guess. But you don't have to leave yet. You can hang around for a while. I could take a couple of days off and show you Cairo, the pyramids."

Jack looked into his friend's eyes. "Is that what you really want, Daniel?"

Daniel returned the gaze. "Yeah, it is."

"It would be kind of fun," Sam said. "We didn't get to do any sightseeing when we were here last year."

Jack nodded. "All right, sounds good."

Daniel smiled, an actual honest-to-goodness smile. It was by no means a bright one, but it was the most they'd seen in a long time.

"Okay," he said. "I'll talk to Helen."

Helen was delighted that Jack, Sam and the man she knew as Murray were leaving, silently muttering, _'Good riddance.'_ When Daniel told her that he wanted to spend a couple of days with them and show them the sights before they left, she said okay, seeing that it was something he really wanted to do. Maybe it would be good for him.

Early the next morning, with Daniel driving the Land Rover and Sam in the passenger seat, Jack and Teal'c following behind in the rental car, they headed into Cairo. The rental was turned in, and the four friends began playing tourist. Actually, it was more a case of Sam, Jack and Teal'c being the tourists while Daniel was the tour guide. He took them to a lot of the tourist hot spots in the area, plus a few places that many tourists didn't know about, imparting some of his knowledge of Egypt, both ancient and present. Jack made a real effort to listen to it all. This was goodbye, the goodbye to his best friend that he didn't get before. Jack really didn't want to say goodbye, but it was finally time to do what was right for Daniel. That's what true friends did. And so, he would spend these last hours with him, and then let go.

Throughout that day and the next, Sam looked at her friend often, etching his face into her memory. Deep down inside was a terrible sense of loss and sadness that this might be the last time she'd see him for a long time. She wanted him to come back with them, if not to the Stargate Program then at least to Colorado, where they could still visit with him. Surely he could get a teaching job in Denver.

Sam immediately chastised herself. She needed to let Daniel do what he felt he must, and if that meant living in some faraway city or country, then she had to accept that. But, God, she was going to miss him.

Teal'c, too, looked often at the man, who, against all odds, had become one of his truest friends. Though he kept the thought to himself, he believed in his heart that the fight against the Goa'uld was losing one of its greatest warriors, that a day would come when all of them would suffer for the loss of his wisdom, knowledge and skills.

Finally, the time for their goodbyes came. Daniel took them to the airport and accompanied them inside. As they approached the security checkpoint, they all stopped. The three departing people looked at their friend. Sam was the first one to step forward. She hugged him tightly, not wanting to let go. When she finally did, she had to wipe away tears.

"I promised myself that I wasn't going to cry," she said.

"It's okay, Sam," Daniel told her softly, a glimmer of tears in his own eyes. He turned to Teal'c.

"Daniel Jackson," the Jaffa said. "I wish you to know that I look upon you as a good and true friend, and, though you have never wished to be a warrior, you are among the greatest we have ever had in our battle against the Goa'uld."

The soft, sincerely spoken words made Daniel's throat start to ache. "Thank you, Teal'c. That . . . that really means a lot to me." His eyes came to rest upon the last person. "Jack."

"Daniel." There was a long moment of silence, then SG-1's commander did something that nearly broke Daniel's control: he stepped forward and pulled the archeologist into a hug. "Goodbye, Danny," he whispered. Pulling back, he cupped the younger man's neck and face as he once did long ago upon discovering Daniel alive and well after they all thought that he'd perished on Apophis' ship. For a long moment, he looked into the tear-bright blue depths of his best friend's eyes, imparting with his gaze what he couldn't say with his voice. He saw Daniel receive the message and accept it.

Clearing his throat, Jack stepped back. "Now, we expect to see you sometime next summer, so don't be a stranger. I'm thinking that somewhere around the eighth of July would be an excellent time to visit."

Daniel gave him a little smile. "Sounds good, Jack."

He watched them get into the security checkpoint line and make their way up to the x-ray machines. They passed through without incident. Giving him a final wave, they disappeared into the crowd.

Remaining where he was for a few seconds longer, Daniel then turned around and headed for the exit, experiencing the first real sense of peace that he'd felt in a very long time.

* * *

Silently, Jack watched Sam and Captain Lucia Gomez discuss something to do with some project the astrophysicist was working on. Captain Gomez was the newest member of SG-1, having been on the team since shortly after Jack, Sam and Teal'c's returned from Egypt. That was one month ago, and, though she would never come close to equaling Daniel, Jack was willing to give her a fair chance, something he realized that he hadn't done with her two predecessors.

Jack's gaze slipped away, his thoughts now on the friend who was no longer there. He wondered how Daniel was doing. Was the man finally gaining some measure of peace and letting go of the past? He really hoped so. He wanted Daniel to be happy, to have a good life. Yes, he wished that life could be here, but that was not to be.

The Stargate Program was moving on without Daniel, though not always easily. His linguistic skills were especially missed on base. There were a lot more things not getting translated because no one there knew the language or they lacked the skill to decipher a language that had changed significantly from its Earth roots. Hammond was intending to hire a couple of new people to try filling the gap, but the loss of Daniel's other skills had been felt around there as well, archeological, anthropological and diplomatic, and the general knew that to find someone who could give to them all that Daniel did would be all but impossible.

The loss was being felt on missions, too. Just last week, SG-1 was on a mission that could have really used Daniel's diplomatic skills. The week before that, their mission ended without accomplishing or learning anything because Daniel wasn't there to translate the Ancient writing on the walls of the ruins they'd found.

Jack had not truly recognized the value of Daniel's contributions to SG-1 until now, all the ways, both big and small, that the man had helped to make it such a great team. It was such a shame that he hadn't seen it before, when he could have told his friend how valuable his contributions were. But then, even if Jack _had_ seen it, would he have told his friend? Probably not, and that made him feel ashamed.

Christmas hadn't been very festive without Daniel there to celebrate with them. Jack, Sam and Teal'c had considered not getting together at all, but they realized that Daniel would be upset if he knew that they'd skipped the usual team get-together because of his absence. And so they spent some time together on Christmas Eve, just the three of them, Major Gonzalez being out of town visiting relatives. They tried their best to be cheerful, but it wasn't easy.

Their mood was elevated when a package from Daniel arrived a couple of days later with gifts for his former teammates and for Janet and Cassie. In the letter that came with the gifts, the archeologist chatted about what had been going on at the dig and appeared to be in better spirits. He told them that he wished he was there to celebrate the holiday with them and promised that, next year, he would be, something that they were happy to hear since they knew that he was considering returning to the dig next fall.

They all knew that they would eventually adjust to Daniel no longer being a daily part of their lives. It was just going to take time. Regardless of how much time it took, though, they would never stop missing him and wishing that he was still there.

* * *

An excited shout sent several people hurrying toward the source of the outcry. When Daniel got there, he saw that Annie Penn and Mark Winchester were staring down at something, talking excitedly. Then he saw what the excitement was about. The two archeologists had just uncovered something that looked like a relief from a wall or stele. Recognizing the significance of the find, Daniel told someone to go get Helen.

When the woman arrived, she caught the air of excitement that was now infecting everyone there. Was this just one tiny surviving fragment or had they found a large piece of an ancient structure or monument?

"Pull everyone else off of what they're doing," Helen ordered. "We need to see what we've got here."

From that moment on, the entire focus of the dig was centered upon uncovering the stone carving. They soon discovered that there was a lot more than one small piece and that it appeared to be a large stele, an upright stone slab. As their efforts continued, more pieces were found and laboriously excavated. A separate tent was set up and a tarp laid out for the pieces. Everyone was on the moon, recognizing that this find might put them in the history books, most certainly in the pages of several prominent archeological publications.

It was two days into the excavation process when Daniel saw something that made his breath catch, his stomach tightening. He made up a reason to take over uncovering that section of the stele, trying not to show what he was feeling. For the rest of the day he poured every ounce of his attention into revealing the images inch by inch. As the others were breaking for the day, he kept working, not even aware of what was going on around him.

"Daniel?"

The hand on his arm made him jump. He lifted a startled gaze to Helen.

"What? Oh. I'm sorry. Did you say something?"

"The sun's going down."

Surprised, Daniel looked at the sky to see that, sure enough, the sun was hovering on the horizon. He'd been so focused on what he was doing that he hadn't even been aware of the fading light.

Helen studied him closely. "Daniel, are you all right? You seem a little tense."

"Yes, I'm fine, just excited about the find."

"Yes, it is extraordinary." The elderly woman smiled. "I heard Annie and Mark talking about posing for their pictures in Archeology Magazine."

Daniel smiled in amusement. "Yes, the thrilling thought of fame and fortune. Well, maybe not fortune. Archeologists usually don't get rich from the things they find."

Helen tugged at his sleeve. "Come on. Time to call it a day."

Reluctantly, Daniel stood and walked with her toward the tent where everyone else was congregating. As they walked, Helen glanced at him more than once. These past six weeks had seen an improvement in him. Traces of the old Daniel were coming back. He seemed to be more relaxed, lighter of spirit, as if whatever burden had been weighing upon his soul was finally lifting. He had also appeared to be lost in thought quite often. What those thoughts were about, she did not know.

Regardless of the improvement, Helen had a feeling that Daniel would never fully return to the way he used to be. Whatever wounds had been inflicted upon his soul had gone deep. But at least he now seemed to be healing.

There was going to be a position opening up at the Smithsonian in the summer, and she intended to recommend Daniel for the job, that is if he wanted it. She knew that she'd have an uphill battle on her hands. Daniel's reputation as a maverick with wild theories still hung over him, but he was more than qualified for the job. And it would give him the freedom to attend digs like this one, which she would be returning to next fall.

Daniel was distracted throughout dinner, and Helen noticed. Something about that stele had really captured his attention. She wondered what it was.

Throughout the next day, Helen spent a lot of time watching Daniel and noticed that he was extremely focused upon uncovering one particular section of the stele. While everyone else was chatting as they worked, he was completely silent, looking as if he was barely aware that anyone else was even there. Helen's instincts, which had always held her in good stead, were telling her that there was something to this, far more than just an archeologist's eagerness over discovering a valuable piece of the past. But what was it? Her curiosity was piqued, and, whenever that happened, she would seldom let go until it was appeased.

* * *

The final surviving section of the stele had been excavated, and the entire thing was now laid out on the tarp, the bits and pieces arranged like a disassembled jigsaw puzzle that wasn't all there. On some areas, time and the elements had worn away the carvings so much that they were no longer even vaguely recognizable, but enough remained of the depicted scene to fascinate the people who uncovered it and to generate an excited buzz of questions and theories. Only one person among them understood the true depth of importance of what they'd found.

Daniel's gazed down at what lay before him, taking in every detail. The scene was that of a great battle, a battle between forces that the people around him had no idea existed. Considering Egypt's history, it wasn't really surprising that, sooner or later, something would be found that would show an event involving the Goa'uld, but this was more than that.

The archeologist looked at the people in the scene one by one. The familiar figures of several gods were there. It was, however, one particular figure that held more importance than all the rest, the one that appeared to be the focus of the battle. He bore the head and body of a human and was dressed like an ordinary Egyptian – except that he held in his hand a ribbon device, or at least that's what Daniel believed it was based upon the rays of light issuing from it. Around the figure was something that looked like an aura, and Daniel guessed that it was actually a force field of some kind. In Daniel's mind, there could be only one explanation for what this was showing.

Daniel was torn about what to do. He knew what he _should_ do, but, if his guesses were right, it could lead to something that touched upon a horror from his past, something that could have far-reaching ramifications – some of which might be very bad.

Finally accepting what he had to do, Daniel went in search of Helen. He found her in a conversation with another member of the dig. The man left as Daniel came up to her.

"Daniel," she said. "I've contacted the SCA. This find is way too important to delay telling them about it."

Daniel nodded, having known this was going to happen. All archeological digs in Egypt that were run by foreigners were required to contact the Supreme Council of Antiquities before any papers on a find were published. With a find of this significance, the SCA would need to be notified without delay. This was one of the reasons why he had to hurry.

"When will they be sending someone out?" he asked.

"This weekend."

Good. He still had a few days, then.

"If you don't mind, I'm going to take a trip into Cairo tomorrow," he said. "The last time I was there, I met up with an old friend, who insisted that I come visit him for a couple of days. I promised that I would, but then we found that relief. He's probably thinking that I forgot all about him."

"Sure, that would be fine. You've been working hard, even harder than the rest of us. You haven't taken a day away from the dig in weeks. It's about time that you took a break."

"Thanks. Is there anything you'd like me to get while I'm there?"

"No, not that I can think of," Helen smiled slightly, "although I wouldn't mind if you happened to stop by that shop that sells those pastries you know I like."

Daniel returned the smile. "Sure, I can do that. Half a dozen or so?"

"That would be nice."

As Daniel walked away, he felt guilty about lying to his friend, but he had no choice. He had to have an excuse for going to Cairo and being gone for a couple of days.

That evening, Daniel packed a bag. Within it, he stashed his laptop. He hadn't used it much since joining the dig, but he was going to need it now. He was also going to need a sizable chunk of the money that he'd withdrawn from his savings account.

The drive to Cairo the next morning passed quickly, the archeologist's mind occupied with thoughts of what he was about to do and what it might lead to, especially if all his guesses proved to be correct.

The first thing he did upon arriving in the city was to get a hotel room. He then went in search of a certain person. Daniel hadn't been lying to Helen when he said that he'd met an old friend there, although Bakari had never really been a friend, more of an acquaintance, someone who could get Daniel what he needed.

"Daniel, my friend," greeted Bakari with a smile when the archeologist found him. The man's brown eyes twinkled. "So, are you here to take me up on my offer to find you some female companionship? I know of a lady skilled in all manner of pleasuring. She would give you a most pleasant evening." The Egyptian laughed, well aware that the younger man wouldn't take him up on the offer.

"Thanks, Bakari, but I'll pass. There's, um, something else that I need from you."

"Name it, and it is yours – for a price, of course."

"I need a cell phone, one that can make international calls, and I need it quickly."

Bakari's gaze sharpened, curious about the reason why Daniel needed the phone. "There are shops where you could buy such a thing."

"Yes, but there would be paperwork, especially since I am not an Egyptian resident."

"Ah, I see." The man held back his curiosity. Most of his clientele did not appreciate questions being asked, so he had learned not to ask them. "I can get you what you need. Give me two hours."

"Thanks, Bakari. How much will it cost? I have money with me."

"Oh, we can settle that when you return. I trust you, my friend."

Daniel spent the next two hours wandering the city restlessly. At the proper time, he returned to the same place and was given the phone. He paid the price Bakari requested without haggling, then took the phone to the hotel.

Checking his watch, Daniel did a quick calculation in his head. Should he call now? It would be in the middle of the night in Colorado Springs. He chose to wait a couple of hours, then made the call.

"Whoever you are, this had better not be a wrong number," Jack grumbled sleepily.

"Jack, it's Daniel."

There was a pause. "Daniel? Great to hear from you, although I would prefer that it not be at four a.m."

"Jack, something's happened, something that needs SG-1."

The colonel was suddenly all business, every trace of sleepiness gone. "Urgent?"

"Definitely."

"Where are you? At the dig?"

"No, I'm in a hotel in Cairo." Daniel gave him the name of the hotel and his room number.

"We'll be there tomorrow. What do we need to bring?"

"One of Sam's scanners, night vision goggles."

"Weapons?"

"Um, no, I don't think so."

"All right. If the situation worsens, contact Hammond."

Assuring the colonel that he would do that, Daniel disconnected the call and prepared for the long wait ahead.

* * *

It was the following afternoon when Jack, Sam and Teal'c arrived at Daniel's hotel room. They had taken a military transport that landed at the Cairo West Air Base. They were tired but also tense about what crisis has spurred their ex-teammate into calling them.

Upon hearing their soft knock, Daniel let them into his room.

"Okay, what's this about?" Jack asked.

"We excavated the remains of a stele. It was covered in a relief that depicts a battle." Daniel unfolded a large piece of paper and laid it on the table. "I did a sketch of it." He starting pointing out and naming the different Egyptian gods.

"This was a mighty battle," Teal'c observed.

Daniel nodded. He laid his finger on one figure. "And it appears to be against this one person."

"Who is it?" Sam asked. "What's that he has in his hand?"

"I think it's a ribbon device. The thing is, though, that he is not an Egyptian god, nor, judging by the way he's dressed, a god from any other culture."

"But then what is he? Only the Goa'uld can use ribbon devices, well, that and ex-hosts like me. Do you think that's what he was?"

Daniel's head shook. "No. I think he was a Harcesis. More than that, I think he was the first one." The others stared at him in surprise. He continued before they could question his theory. "Think about it. At some point, there had to be a first one. Somehow, the Goa'uld found out that the child of two hosts would be born with all of the knowledge of the Goa'uld, not just knowledge gained from the symbiotes inside the parents, but _all_ of the knowledge, everything that the Goa'uld as a species ever learned. Do you remember what I reported after I woke up from that dream Shifu gave me? In the dream, I built devices that the Goa'uld couldn't possibly have since, if they did, they'd have been using them against each other and us."

"You know, I still don't understand how all that works," Jack said. "How could a human kid be born with all that stuff in his head?"

"I actually put some thought into that after that incident, and I wrote a report with my theories. It doesn't surprise me, though, that you never read it."

"Well, since I don't have that report with me, Daniel, how about if you just summarize it?"

"Okay. There is a theory that humans are capable of genetically passing on memories to their children."

"You mean like the Goa'uld," Sam said, having heard of the theory.

"Well, yes and no. From what I've learned about the Goa'uld, that process is different. But that's not important now. Let's say that humans can pass on memories genetically, but it's something that almost never happens and is never more than just tiny bits and pieces of things. What if the Goa'uld figured out that our species had that capacity? They hook up to our brains, after all, so they'd have learned a lot about us, things even we don't know. We all know from the Tok'ra that a symbiote can share their knowledge with their host. We also know that Goa'uld only have the memories of their own lineage, passed down from the queen that spawned them. So, put yourself in the shoes of some Goa'uld who has another one for a mate, a Goa'uld who was spawned from a different queen. He starts thinking about what would happen if he and his mate fully turned on the ability their hosts have to pass on memories genetically, then dumped what they know into the brains of those hosts and produced a human child? That baby would inherit all those memories. He'd have the knowledge of not one Goa'uld lineage but two. If that child was then made into a host, the Goa'uld inside him would have quite an edge over the others."

"That was Apophis' intention for the child that his host fathered," Teal'c said.

"Yeah. So, these two Goa'uld do just that. But there's a problem. They don't realize that the baby won't be born with just the knowledge of two lineages, he will have a whole lot more, knowledge long buried inside the Goa'ulds' memories, so deeply that they no longer had access to it. The child grows up with all that vast knowledge, possibly hiding it from everyone. Now, whether or not he was actually made a host is something I don't know, although, if that image on the stele is really him, he never got the chance to take on the persona of a god. Regardless, he starts to make plans of conquest, not just of Earth but the whole galaxy. Even if he has no Goa'uld inside him, the lust for power is there, and so is the evil."

Something in Daniel's voice made the others look at him closely. Their friend knew all too well what he was talking about, the evil, the desire for power, all the things that came with the Goa'uld genetic memories.

Daniel continued. "Before anyone realizes what's happening, the Harcesis has constructed powerful devices, bent upon taking control of everything. There's a big battle, and it takes the combined efforts of several Goa'uld to stop him. After that is when it is made forbidden for any Goa'uld to do what those first two did."

Sam nodded. "It makes sense." Then she frowned. "Except for one thing. How could he have controlled Goa'uld technology like the ribbon device? He wouldn't have had Naquadah in his blood."

"I was thinking about that, and I believe I might have an answer. What if all Goa'uld hosts have Naquadah in their blood, not just ones who had a symbiote die inside them like you did? After all, when a Goa'uld uses a ribbon device or something else like that, the thing is in the hand of the host. It could be that a Goa'uld injects Naquadah into their host's body so that they can more easily use technology that needs it."

Sam thought about it. "You might be right. But that would mean that even ex-hosts like Skaara would be able to use that technology."

"Yes, and that might be a way for us to confirm or disprove my theory. Anyway, if Naquadah is in a host's body, it could be passed on to the host's offspring, either through the sperm or the umbilical cord."

"Okay, so let's say that you're right," Jack said. "Why the emergency call? Do you think that somebody at the dig is going to figure out something from that carving?"

Daniel shook his head. "No. Everyone is curious and puzzled about what the scene is depicting, but I really doubt that they could ever figure out the truth. The reason why I called is this." He pointed at a structure depicted in the scene. "I recognize it. It's in those ruins near our dig. The structure is notable because some of the damage to it is more than just from age and the elements."

"You believe that it was partly destroyed in the battle," Teal'c surmised.

"Yes. What if it's where the Harcesis built the things he made?"

"Even if it is, all that stuff would have been taken or destroyed a long time ago," Sam said.

"But what if it wasn't, Sam? What if there were things hidden away? Osiris had a ship hidden. If he could do that, a Harcesis could have had some kind of underground lab that was never found."

The major started to get excited. "You're right. It _is_ possible."

"You mean to say that under that building could be some hidden cache of Goa'uld technology?" Jack asked.

"Maybe."

"Damn. We have to check it out."

Daniel nodded. "That's why I contacted you. But we need to move quickly. People from the Supreme Council of Antiquities will be arriving this weekend to look at the relief. That probably means that there will also be reporters. Things will be getting busy around there."

"So, we have to be in and out before then."

"Yeah. The problem is that I don't know if they have any kind of patrol at night. There was some trouble with looters a few months ago. I'm going to have to find out before we can go in."

"Will you be able to find out tomorrow?"

"Yeah, I think so. One of the guys at our dig should know. I'd have asked him before I left, but he wasn't there."

"All right. We'll assume that we can make our move tomorrow night. If that's not going to be possible, contact us."

Daniel got on his computer and showed his ex-teammates photos and video that he'd taken of the ruins when he visited them. It would help give them a lay of the land and enable them to find the structure they wanted.

"Will you be able to get out of the camp tomorrow night?" Jack asked the archeologist.

"Yeah, that shouldn't be a problem."

"All right. You know the area better than we do. What's a good rendevous point?"

Daniel told them about a good spot that would take him only around twenty minutes to reach by foot from the camp.

"Sir, if we find any devices, how are we going to get them out?" Sam asked. "The Egyptian government doesn't know about the Stargate."

"We'll have to cross that bridge when we come to it, Carter. We might have to call in the Tok'ra for help."

Daniel handed Jack a key. "I booked a room for you. It's a couple doors down the hall."

"Good." Jack caught his friend's eyes. "You did good, Daniel."

"Thanks, but all this might be for nothing. We might not find anything."

"I guess we'll find out tomorrow night."

* * *

The camp was silent as Daniel snuck out of his tent. He glanced about, checking to make sure that there was no one around. Quietly, he made his way out of the camp.

Daniel waited until he was out of sight of the camp before turning on his flashlight. Making sure that he kept going the right way by checking his compass often, he covered the distance to the rendevous point. Behind the crumbling walls of an ancient structure he found his ex-teammates.

"Any problems?" Jack asked.

"No. I found out that we don't have to worry about anyone coming around the area where we'll be going. It's not presently under excavation, and the camp is at the opposite end of the ruins."

"Good. That'll make things easier."

"What the hell is going on here?"

The sudden sound of a voice coming out of the darkness startled everyone. They all turned, and Jack shone his flashlight in that direction, illuminating the speaker.

"Crap," he cursed.

Helen Danson came forward, her eyes coming to rest on Daniel.

"Would you care to explain this, Daniel?"

"Uhhhh. . . ."

"'Uh' is not an answer. I get up to go use the latrine, and what do I see? You sneaking off into the night. Something's been up with you ever since we started uncovering that stele, and I've been wondering what it was. I can only assume that this . . . clandestine meeting has something to do with it. So, now, you're going to tell me what's going on."

_'Crap again,'_ thought Jack. "It's classified," he said aloud.

"Bullshit. What could possibly be classified about a several-thousand-year-old Egyptian stele?"

"We really can't tell you, Helen," Daniel replied.

The woman's face hardened, angry that a man she had trusted appeared to be involved in some kind of military cover-up. "Fine. Then I'm going right back to the camp and putting a call through on the satellite phone to the SCA. Maybe they can get to the bottom of this."

Teal'c stepped forward. "We cannot allow you to do that, Helen Danson."

"What are you going to do? Kill me?"

Jack rolled his eyes. "Of course not. We're just going to tie you up and leave you here until we've done what we came to do. Then we'll drive you a wee bit further out into the desert and let you walk back to camp. By the time you get there, we'll be on a plane back to the States. What you do then is up to you, although, based upon your hatred for the military, I don't think you'll be contacting them or the government and bringing down a lot of unwanted attention from them." He looked at Daniel. "I'm really sorry, Daniel, but you're going to have to come with us. I guess it's a good thing I told you to bring all your stuff just in case."

Daniel's gaze dropped to the ground, his heart heavy with the regret that the new life he'd begun to build was over. He looked up at Helen, who was staring at him accusingly, an expression of betrayal in her eyes. He hated seeing that look on the face of someone whose opinion of him mattered, somebody who was his friend.

"What if we told her?" he suddenly asked.

"No way, Daniel," Jack responded. "That is not an option."

"But if she swore not to tell anyone—"

"Daniel, you know what's at stake. You know how important it is that people don't find out what we're a part of, what you used to be a part of. We can't trust that secret to someone like her. She hates the military and all it stands for. She isn't going to appreciate what it is that we do."

Knowing that Jack was right, Daniel returned his gaze to Helen. There were now questions and uncertainty in her eyes.

"I'm sorry, Helen," he said. "I really wish that I could tell you what this is about. There are so many things that, if you knew about them, it would change your whole world view. You'd be amazed at some of the things I've seen and done."

"Daniel." Jack's voice held a note of warning, telling him that he mustn't say anything more. The colonel turned to Sam. "Carter, get some of that rope we brought."

Sam nodded and took a step toward their vehicle.

"Wait."

All eyes turned to Helen, but she had her gaze on only one person.

"I know that you are a good man, Daniel," she said. "So, I'm going to ask you something, and I'm going to trust that what you tell me is the truth. This thing he's talking about, the thing you were involved with, does it hurt innocent people?"

Daniel hesitated before he replied. "Some . . . some innocent people have been hurt." He looked at his teammates. "But we've helped a lot more people than have been hurt. We've done a lot of good things, important things, stuff that made a difference."

Daniel's ex-teammates were overjoyed by what they were hearing. It appeared that Daniel had found his way past his feelings of failure, perhaps not completely, but he was beginning to recognize that the things he'd done hadn't been for nothing.

The archeologist turned back to Helen. She searched his eyes intently. And then she nodded.

"I'll keep your secret," she said.

Jack stared at her narrowly. "And how can we be sure that _we_ can trust _you_?"

Helen straightened her posture, meeting Jack's gaze unflinchingly. "I swear on the grave of my son."

That hit Jack in a way that only someone who'd lost a child could be hit. He looked at Daniel.

"Helen lost her son in Vietnam," the archeologist explained.

Jack turned sharply back to Helen. "Is that another reason why. . . ."

"I hate the military? Yes. They took my baby boy from me, my only child."

"I'm sorry."

Helen nodded, hearing the sincerity in the words.

Jack nodded. "All right, but there's no time to explain everything now. We've got to get going. You can wait for us here and walk back to camp with Daniel after we return or you can go on back to camp now. I'll let him be the one to tell you everything."

Helen shook her head. "Whatever it is that you're going to do, I'm going with you."

"That can't happen. We need to move quickly and stealthily, and you don't have the training."

"Where are you going?"

Jack hesitated before replying. "To the ruins near your dig."

"Then I can help. I worked on the dig there for three years. I know the place well."

"It would be helpful to have someone who knows the place, Jack," Daniel said. "I wasn't able to spend much time there, so my knowledge of the ruins is limited."

The colonel studied Helen, his eyes running up and down her slender form, taking in the sweat pants, the hastily donned jacket and boots. The woman guessed what he was thinking.

"If you think I won't be able to keep up with you, think again. I may not be quite so young anymore, but I'm no rocking-chair-bound old fogey."

Jack's lips twitched upward at the comment. "All right, but if you start lagging behind, we're not gonna slow down. You'll just have to come back here and wait for us."

"Deal."

"Okay, then let's go."

* * *

While the stuff about how a Harcesis could have all the Goa'uld genetic memories is just a theory of mine, the stuff about Goa'uld injecting Naquadah into their hosts is the only explanation I have for how it is that Vala can use things like the Goa'uld healing device when Quetesh did not die inside her. The symbiote was removed from her by a Tok'ra.


	5. Chapter 5

CHAPTER FIVE

The five people made their way across the night-dark desert. True to her word, Helen kept pace with the others, grateful that she stayed in shape.

She glanced at the man who walked beside her. His demeanor had changed. There was a sense of purposefulness and determination about him now. She had no idea what she'd gotten herself into, but, whatever it was, she had a feeling that it was big.

"Daniel, what is this about?" she asked, no longer able to rein in her curiosity. "What the hell was it that you really did for the government and military?"

It was Jack who answered. "Well, ya know those theories of his that made him a laughingstock to his fellow archeologists? It turns out that they shouldn't have laughed."

"What? Daniel, what is he saying?"

"That I was right."

"You can't be serious."

"It's true," Sam said. "Daniel had it right all along. The pyramids really were landing platforms for alien spacecraft."

"Yep," Jack confirmed. "I've seen it with my own eyes, just not here on Earth."

Helen's mouth was hanging open. "Not here on. . . ." Her expression abruptly darkened. "What kind of bull are you trying to hand me? You don't really expect me to believe this, do you?"

Jack halted, causing everyone else to do the same. He turned around and stared appraisingly at the woman for several seconds.

"Teal'c," he then said, "show her Junior."

Daniel immediately objected. "Jack."

"Daniel, she's the one who insisted on knowing what this is about. Can you think of a more surefire way to prove that we're telling the truth?"

The archeologist sighed. "No."

Teal'c lifted his shirt, revealing the opening of his larval pouch. Helen nearly shrieked when the larva inside poked its head out, squeaking softly.

"Dear God!" she cried, taking a hasty step back. "What is that thing?"

"It's the larval form of an alien species called the Goa'uld," Daniel explained. "Teal'c is a Jaffa. His people act sort of like incubators for the Goa'uld until they reach maturity."

Helen gaped at the larva as it retreated into its pouch. Her eyes then lifted to Teal'c's face.

"You're not human?"

"No. I am from the planet Chulak."

"We've met lots of alien species, Helen," Daniel told his former mentor. "Some of them are our friends and allies, others, like the Goa'uld, aren't so nice."

"We've been in a war against them for almost five years," Sam explained, "six, if you count the first time we encountered them."

Helen was struggling to take in everything. "But . . . but how is it that everyone doesn't know about this? How could you have met all those alien species and be at war with one without the rest of Earth knowing?"

"Come on," Jack said. "We're wasting time. We can talk while we walk."

They resumed their journey.

"You recall me telling you that I did a job for the government that lasted two weeks before going out of the country for over a year?" Daniel asked Helen. He received a nod. "The job was deciphering the symbols on a coverstone discovered on the Giza Plateau in 1928. I learned that what was found beneath the coverstone was something called a Stargate, a device that opens sort of a bridge between planets. We call them wormholes."

Sam took over the explanations. "The wormholes enable us to travel thousands, even millions of light-years in a matter of seconds. We have visited hundreds of worlds using the gates."

"During that year I was gone I was actually living on another planet. It's where I met my wife and her people."

Helen's eyes got even wider. "Your wife was an alien?"

"No, she was human. You see, for thousands of years, the Goa'uld took people from Earth to populate other planets, to act as their slaves and . . . and other things." Daniel decided that she was not yet ready to know about the Goa'uld taking hosts. "Um, this next part may be hard for you to take."

"The next part? Daniel, this whole thing is hard for me to take."

"Yeah, I should imagine so. But what I'm going to tell you now is going to completely change everything you've learned about the mythology of Egypt and other civilizations. When the Goa'uld were here on Earth, they assumed the persona of our ancient gods. Some actually created the identities, whereas others just took on the roles of gods that already existed in a culture's mythology. Ra, Horus, Hathor, Cronus, they were all Goa'uld, as were many other gods of Egypt, Greece, and several other ancient civilizations. Ra was the first, the one who discovered Earth and started the whole thing. This went on for thousands of years until the Goa'uld finally left the planet for good."

Helen was speechless, her mind reeling. It was all so hard to believe. Yet she'd seen that thing with her own eyes. It was real.

It was several minutes before she spoke again. "And you've been involved in this . . . this war all this time?" she asked Daniel.

"Daniel hasn't just been involved," Jack said before his friend could reply, "without him, everyone on Earth would be dead."

Sam took over. "Daniel's skills and knowledge have been invaluable to us. Without him, many of our missions would have failed. There are countless people all across the galaxy who owe their lives to him."

"Daniel Jackson has been one of our greatest warriors in the fight against the Goa'uld," Teal'c added.

Helen's eyes went to the man she had known since he was seventeen years old. His gaze was on the ground, and there was a slight frown on his face. Daniel was a warrior in an intergalactic fight against evil aliens? It sounded like a plot from some silly science fiction TV show.

The question of what had caused Daniel to change so much returned to Helen's mind. She was beginning to understand now. If he really had been out there in the galaxy all these years, fighting a continual war against an alien race, she could only imagine the things he'd gone through, the horrors he'd witnessed, the pain he'd suffered.

Helen knew that what they'd told her was only a tiny portion of the whole story, but she'd learned enough for now. The rest could come later. And perhaps when she learned the rest, she'd also find out what had left the scars on Daniel's soul.

There was one other thing she needed to know now, however.

"The relief on that stele," she said. "What was it depicting?"

"A battle," Daniel answered, "one between the Goa'uld and a person called a Harcesis, at least it was, if my guess is right. And if I'm right about something else, the place we're going to now could give us things that will help us fight the Goa'uld."

The rest of the trip was made in silence. As they drew close to the ruins, Jack and Sam donned night vision goggles and searched the area with binoculars.

"The area where you said the building was is clear," Jack announced. "We've got activity to the north."

"That's where the camp is set up," Helen said. "What building are you talking about?"

Daniel described the structure to her. "Do you know which one I'm talking about?"

"Yes, I know it. From what we could tell, it appeared to be one of the original structures."

Daniel nodded. "I think that, when the stele was made, it was one of the only buildings here."

"Daniel, I've been inside what's left of it, and there's nothing there."

"We believe that what we're looking for is in a hidden chamber underneath it," Sam explained.

Daniel put on a pair of goggles and gave the last pair to Helen, showing her how to use them. Teal'c, who had the best night vision, would be going without.

They cautiously covered the remaining distance to the ruins. With the aid of Daniel's and Helen's knowledge of the ruins, they found the building they were seeking. There wasn't much left of it. The roof was completely gone, as was one of the walls and half of another. The only reason why Daniel had been able to identify it were the wide steps leading to the entrance and the remnants of two stone slabs at the foot of the steps that, according to the relief, had once held lion statues.

They ascended the steps. Figuring it was safe to do so, they removed their goggles and switched to flashlights. Sam pulled out her scanner and ran it over the stone floor.

"I'm not detecting anything, but that isn't surprising. There's no telling how thick this stone is."

Daniel began studying the walls and floor. "If there is an underground chamber, there should be some kind of mechanism that would open the entrance. Let's just hope it wasn't on the wall that was destroyed."

"Or that it needs a key to open it like that one Osiris had," Sam added.

Helen looked at her sharply, still not used to the idea that these people had actually met some of the gods of ancient Egypt – or, rather, the aliens that pretended to be those gods.

Daniel focused all his attention on the worn remains of a relief on the back wall. So little of it had survived that it was all but impossible to tell what it had been. However, the fact that there had been a relief on an inside wall rather than painted images could be important.

He pulled a brush from one of his pockets and used it to remove some dirt and debris from the relief. Three of the figures were in slightly better shape than the rest because they protruded out from the wall more.

"Three of these are almost high-relief instead of low-relief," he remarked.

Helen came forward and examined them. "You're right."

Using his brush, Daniel cleared away the last of the dirt. He examined the figures closely and spotted a nearly invisible seam around the edges.

"I think these press inward. There are three of them, so it could be some kind of combination lock. You have to press them in the right order."

"So, what's the right order?" Jack asked.

"I have no idea."

"If it's a three-character code, and you use each one only once, there would be just six possible combinations," Sam said.

"But we don't know if it is a three-character code. It could be more or less."

"More important, we don't know what will happen if we put in the wrong code," Jack said.

Daniel stared at the three figures. They gave him no clue as to which ones to press or in what order, which made sense. The Harcesis would have known the code. He wouldn't have had a reason to leave clues.

"I guess all we can do is start pressing them," he said. "Um . . . maybe the rest of you should back away or even leave the building."

"Daniel, we're a team," Jack said. "The rest of us aren't going to go running to safety while you risk your neck."

Daniel met his eyes. "I'm not part of the team anymore, Jack."

"Yes, you are. Maybe not officially, but, right now, at this moment, you are part of SG-1, at least as far as I'm concerned."

"That goes for me, too," Sam said.

"And I," stated Teal'c.

Helen looked at the three people who had claimed to be Daniel's friends, and she realized that they were more than that. They all shared a bond with him, one forged by years of facing life and death situations together, working side-by-side for a common goal.

Daniel smiled softly, nodding at them. He then looked at Helen. "You should get out of here."

"I may not be part of this SG-1 you're talking about, but I'm staying, too."

"No, if something happens, we'll need somebody to contact our base and tell them what happened."

Jack, Sam and Teal'c did not miss the fact that Daniel had said "_our_ base".

Sam hastily wrote down a number and handed it to Helen. "Call that number and say Five Delta Zebra Victor. It's an emergency code that will make them patch you in directly to the base commander. Tell him what happened."

Helen looked at the number, then at Daniel. Reluctantly, she nodded. She left the structure and put several yards between her and it.

Daniel returned his gaze to the three symbols. Picking the one in the center, he pushed it. It didn't move, so he pushed a little harder. He felt it give slightly, sinking a fraction of an inch into the wall. He did the same to the one on the left, then on the right. Nothing happened.

"Well, this could be a good thing or a bad thing," Jack commented. "We didn't get blown up."

"But we might have locked the entrance so that we won't be able to get in," Sam said.

Daniel next tried the middle one, the right one, then the left one, which also resulted in nothing happening. His third attempt was right, left, middle. That time, something _did_ happen. They were all startled by the sound of stone grinding on stone and turned to the right to see one of the floor slabs slowly sink, then slide back. They approached the hole and shone their lights down into it, revealing a staircase.

Daniel called to Helen, and she came back up.

"Teal'c, you stay here and keep watch," Jack ordered.

Cautiously, the four people descended the staircase. When they reached the bottom, lights snapped on, illuminating a large room around the size of the structure above.

"Holy Hannah," Sam said.

A collection of devices, both large and small, were scattered about the chamber. Daniel went up to one of them, the others following him.

Sam noticed the look on his face. "Daniel, do you know what this is?"

"Yeah. It's one of the things I built in that dream Shifu gave me. You can disable Stargates with it."

Sam's breath drew in sharply. "How?"

"Um, I don't remember the technical stuff, but you can use it two different ways, either by dialing the gate and sending a signal or by taking it someplace near the gate and doing the same thing."

Sam stared at the device. "Daniel, do you realize how valuable this is? We could dial into a primary Goa'uld target and knock out their gate, cut off their avenue of escape and make it impossible for them to call for reinforcements. Are the effects permanent?"

"No, you can reverse it with the device, but, of course, you'd have to do it in person since you couldn't dial into the gate."

The archeologist stepped away and looked around the room. "I know what all these things are. I didn't build them all in that dream, but I did schematics for a lot of them." He gave a little shudder.

Jack came up to him and laid a hand on his shoulder. "Hey. You okay?"

"Yeah. It's just that . . . remembering that dream and the things I did in it, the way I acted, it's . . . not a good memory."

"What dream?" Helen asked. "What are you talking about?"

Daniel sighed. "It's a . . . really long story." He spied something over on the far wall and went to it. Reading the Goa'uld symbols, he turned it on. After several seconds, he said, "This is too much."

The note in his voice made the others look at him more closely. As they walked up to him, Sam saw that the device was a computer of some sort. Daniel was flipping through screens, bringing up pages of text, technical drawings and other things.

"I thought that there might be a few things here," he murmured, "just a few things that would help us, but this . . . God, I can't let it happen, not for real."

Jack knew what he was talking about, Daniel's report on what happened in that dream being one that the colonel _did_ read.

"It won't, Daniel," he assured his friend. "We'll know better."

Daniel turned haunted eyes to him. "How can you be sure? It almost caused a nuclear war, Jack. It probably _would_ have caused one if I hadn't—" His voice choked off, and he strode away a few paces. Jack followed him.

"Hey. That didn't really happen, Daniel, and it's not _gonna_ happen. Forewarned is forearmed, right? We won't make the same mistakes that were made in that dream."

Daniel shook his head. "We can't build those defense satellites. It's too dangerous. The other things, okay, but not those satellites."

"Unfortunately, we really won't have a say in it," Sam said. "That will be up to the president and the joint chiefs."

Daniel's gaze returned to the computer. "I could delete it. I could erase the plans for the satellites from the computer."

"Daniel, you know I can't let you do that," Jack said. "There could come a day when we'd need them."

"Jack, one of the things that dream taught me was what can happen when any civilization is suddenly given big technological advancements that they're not mature enough and responsible enough to handle. Do you honestly think that, given our present political climate, our government would be willing to openly share the information for the most powerful weapon we've ever had with Russia, even with the warning that dream gave us?"

Jack paused before replying. "Probably not."

"Then what's going to happen if we build the satellites and launch them? Do you think that Russia wouldn't say anything about it, just let it slide?"

"That would be pretty unlikely," Sam answered.

"Then the same thing that happened in that dream would happen for real."

Jack could not escape Daniel's logic. Regardless of the agreement made with Russia over sharing technology obtained through the Stargate Program, too many in the U.S. government would believe that giving Russia that technology would be too risky, not so much because of the threat that they might turn it against the U.S., but that they might secretly sell parts of it to other countries, a danger that Daniel in that dream pointed out. It would also increase the risk of the technology leaking to far more dangerous countries or groups.

At the same time, it would be impossible for the U.S. to suddenly launch a huge number of new satellites and keep it a secret. In Daniel's dream, they tried to pass them off as a network of cutting-edge communications satellites, which might have fooled most of the world, but Russia knew better.

"Jack, you know I'm right," Daniel said.

The colonel sighed. "Yeah, I do. As much as I'd want to see all threat of a Goa'uld attack on Earth eliminated, we couldn't build that satellite network, not until we're . . . a lot more mature."

Helen was, to say the least, shocked by Jack's words. Here was a military man actually agreeing that a weapon shouldn't be built. The woman could hardly believe it.

It was Sam who was now staring at the computer. "Daniel, would there be a way to hide it rather than delete it? Make it so that the plans wouldn't show up unless a code was entered? In that way, we wouldn't lose the information. It would still be there for someday in the future when the situation has changed."

Daniel walked up to the computer. "I don't know. I don't know much about doing things like that."

"And I can't read this dialect of Goa'uld, so I couldn't do it."

"What about the Tok'ra? Do you think they'd be willing to do it?"

"They might."

"It would sort of be in their best interest to make sure we didn't blow ourselves to smithereens, us being allies and all," Jack remarked.

Sam nodded. "I'd say that might be our best option. Daniel, maybe you should get on the computer first and see if you can see some way to do what we want."

Daniel did so, but could find no instructions for how to hide or even password protect certain data.

"That makes sense," he said. "If the Harcesis was worried about someone else getting their hands on this, he'd have password-protected everything. He believed that nobody would find this place."

"Wasn't that rather foolish of him?" Helen asked, causing everyone to look at her. "It seems to me that he was pretty lax with the safeguards. Look how easily we got in here."

Sam frowned. "She's right. It _was_ too easy. The Harcesis would have wanted to keep this technology out of the hands of the Goa'uld."

Now, Jack was frowning. "Here's a thought. What if we set off a self-destruct device that's counting down as we speak?"

"I'd have thought it would have gone off by now."

Daniel had a thought. "Unless. . . ." He began searching the chamber, looking at each device. He found what he was seeking on a table with several other items.

"What is it?" Jack asked, studying the small device.

"It detects the presence of a Goa'uld. It can be programmed to send a signal, including to an explosive device."

"And is it on?"

"Yes."

"Daniel, are you saying that, if I hadn't had Teal'c wait up top, we'd have all been blown up?"

Daniel shook his head. "It only works with symbiotes inside hosts. It was designed to eliminate rival Goa'uld. Have a Jaffa or human slave plant the device along with an explosive and turn it on, then wait for the unsuspecting Goa'uld to enter the room. Big boom, and the rival Goa'uld is no longer a problem. The Harcesis probably figured that, if this place was ever found by a Goa'uld, they would come down here personally to check it out, which he was probably right about."

"This could really come in handy," Sam said. "If we could adjust it so that it detects Jaffa, too, and boost the range, all SG teams could carry one and be alerted to the presence of Jaffa or Goa'uld. It could save a lot of lives on missions."

"Yeah, I can think of a few times when knowing ahead of time that there were Jaffa around would have been really nice," Jack remarked.

"Can you turn it off?" Sam asked Daniel. "If we're going to get help from the Tok'ra, it can't be on."

Daniel pressed two buttons. "It's off now . . . I think."

"Well, just to be on the safe side, I think we should take it with us and get it as far away from whatever explosives are planted here as we can," Jack said.

Daniel nodded and handed the device to Sam, who put it in a pocket.

Jack glanced at his watch. "We need to get a move-on. I want to be out of here and get our two archeologists here back to their camp as soon as possible." He looked at Daniel. "You need to get some sleep tonight since you're going to be meeting us again tomorrow night, that is if we can contact the Tok'ra and get them to send a cloaked cargo ship here."

Upon hearing the words "cloaked ship" Helen murmured, "Why do I feel like I'm in an episode of Star Trek?"

"Nah. The guys on Star Trek didn't have our sense of humor," Jack responded. "They took things _way_ too seriously." He paused. "I take that back. Kirk could definitely see the humor in some situations. Picard on the other hand. . . . Did that guy ever even smile?"

Helen smiled in spite of herself. This Colonel O'Neill might be military, but there was something about him that you couldn't help but like. And his willingness to give up a powerful weapon because it was the wise thing to do had definitely scored some points in the woman's books. Maybe she _could_ understand why these people were Daniel's friends.

They left the chamber, and Daniel figured out how to close the opening. They made it out of the ruins without incident and began the walk back to where the vehicle was parked. As they walked, Helen asked who the Tok'ra were, and Daniel explained, which also made it necessary for him to tell her how Goa'uld took hosts. The woman shuddered at the thought of having her own body enslaved and used against her will by an evil parasitical creature.

Helen also learned a little about the Jaffa and the rebel movement that was still in its infancy but slowly growing. It was all so mind-boggling that Daniel and so many others on Earth were involved in these things that made many of the troubles on this planet look petty in comparison.

Daniel wasn't surprised when Helen asked about the dream. In answer, he first explained what a Harcesis was and about the evil inherent in the Goa'uld genetic memory.

"We encountered a Harcesis a while ago, a boy whose memories of the Goa'uld knowledge had been repressed, thanks to a very power alien being we'd met previously. We wanted him to give us the knowledge. He tried to make us see that it was too dangerous, that there was no way to divorce all that knowledge from the evil that came with it, but we just weren't listening. To teach us, he gave me a dream in which I had all the knowledge. It . . . changed me, made me into something as evil as the Goa'uld. I did some terrible things in the dream, things that. . . ." He paused, then shook his head. "That dream succeeded in showing me that the price tag that came with that knowledge was far too high."

"And yet, now, you actually have the technology that was part of that knowledge."

"Yeah."

"We just have to do everything we can to make sure that it's used in the right way," Sam said.

Back at the rendevous point, Daniel took his bags from the truck.

"We'll meet you back here same time tomorrow," Jack said to the younger man. He looked at Helen. "This time, don't go following him, all right? Just stay in camp. I'm going to be in enough trouble as it is when the general finds out about you."

Daniel and Helen began the walk back to camp.

"Interesting friends you have there," the woman remarked after a couple of minutes.

Daniel smiled slightly. "Yes, they are. We've been through a lot together."

Helen paused for several seconds. "Why did you leave?"

Daniel didn't answer for a while. "Several reasons. I had reached the point where I felt like I wasn't doing enough to really help anymore. So much had changed from the way it was in the beginning, more fighting and less exploration. It just got to be too much. My wife dying was a big part of it as well."

"What happened to her?"

"She, um, was made a host to a Goa'uld, the mate of Apophis."

"Oh, Daniel. I'm so sorry."

"I fought for over two years to save her, but, in the end, I failed. When she was killed, it . . ." his voice dropped, "it killed something inside me, too." He sighed. "The last straw was losing Sarah."

"Sarah?"

"Sarah Gardner."

Helen gasped. She knew the woman, having met her when Sarah and Daniel were working with Doctor Jordan.

"What happened?"

"Two canopic jars were found on a dig. It turned out that they were actually stasis chambers holding Goa'uld symbiotes, Osiris and Isis. Sarah opened the jar with Osiris and was taken as his host. They escaped from Earth. They were killed recently on a mission I was part of."

Helen rested a comforting hand on Daniel's arm. She could now understand why his soul was so battered.

"So, what now?" she asked.

Daniel looked at her questioningly. "What do you mean?"

"You've found all those things that will help you fight the Goa'uld. That changes a lot. Are you going to keep doing what you are now or go back to help in the fighting again?"

"They don't really need me for that. Despite what Sam, Jack and Teal'c said, I'm really not all that important, no more so that anyone else."

"You know what, Daniel? I don't believe you."

That made Daniel stare at her in surprise.

"Look at what you just accomplished. You figured out the meaning of that relief and led your team to that technology, things that will save lives and might even end the war sooner. That was pretty important, and you're the one who did it. _You_. Nobody else. Don't minimize what you did, Daniel. That's not being fair to yourself."


	6. Chapter 6

CHAPTER SIX

As soon as Jack, Sam and Teal'c arrived back at their hotel room, they contacted the general.

"General, have I got some great news for you," Jack said. "Thanks to Daniel, we now have a whole bunch of new toys to help us kick Goa'uld ass."

He briefly filled the general in on the stuff about the stele, the Harcesis, and the hidden chamber with its cache of advanced technology, saying nothing about the defense satellites and the decision that had been made about them.

"Colonel, I cannot express how delighted I am to hear this," Hammond said. "Please give my personal thanks to Doctor Jackson."

"I'll do that, sir."

Jack explained about the need for the Tok'ras' help to remove the stuff from the chamber.

"It'll be tricky, even with keeping the ship cloaked," he said, "but it's the only way we'll be able to get that stuff out of there under the noses of the archeologists, that is unless we got the Asgard involved."

"I'm afraid that you're probably right. All right. I will contact the Tok'ra immediately and see if they can send a ship. I will call you as soon as I find out anything."

"Thanks, sir. Oh, and tell them that, if at all possible, it would be great if Jacob could be the one to come."

"I'll pass on that request, Colonel."

When Hammond called back, it was with the news that the Tok'ra were on their way with a cargo ship and would arrive at around eleven p.m. Cairo time. Jacob and two other Tok'ra would be the crew. Jack gave the general the coordinates for the rendevous point, which Hammond would relay to the Tok'ra when they arrived.

At the proper time, SG-1 left for the place they would meet the ship, which was the same spot where Daniel would be joining them. The ship arrived just a couple of minutes after the team did. It remained cloaked as the Tok'ra exited it.

"Hey, Dad," Sam said with a smile upon seeing her father. She gave him a hug.

"Sam. It's great to see you. I have to say that this is really big news. If the Tok'ra had parties, there would be one going on at Revanna right now. How on Earth did you find out about this?"

"We have Daniel to thank for that," Jack said.

Sam briefly told her father about the stele, what it depicted, and what Daniel guessed about what it might mean. Jacob was pretty impressed with how Daniel had pieced it all together.

"Yeah, leave it to Daniel to stumble onto some ancient Egyptian pictures that made him figure out that some Harcesis may have hidden a bunch of stuff here," Jack said, a little smile on his face that almost looked like one of pride.

Jacob looked around. "Speaking of Daniel, where is he?"

The three members of SG-1 shared a glance.

"He resigned from the program, Dad," Sam answered.

Jacob was shocked. "What? Did it have something to do with what happened to Sarah?"

"As the saying goes, that was the straw that broke the camel's back," Jack replied, "but, unbeknownst to us, he was having some real doubts and issues even before then."

"Damn. How are you guys handling that?"

"It hasn't been easy," Sam admitted. "We've all missed him at the SGC and on missions, too. He's working here in Egypt on a dig, which is where the stele was found."

"Well, that was a lucky break."

"Yeah," Jack agreed. "But then, that seems to be the way it is with Daniel sometimes, being in the right place at the right time to give us exactly what we need to pull a rabbit out of our hat."

"Will he be joining us?"

Sam nodded. "In about an hour." She paused. "There's something that we have to talk to you about. We need your help with something besides just retrieving that stuff."

Jacob and the other two Tok'ra were filled in on the issue with the defense satellites and what had been decided.

Jacob studied the teammates. "And all three of you are in agreement on this?"

"Yep," Jack confirmed. "Yes, I know. Big departure for me. Maybe I'm finally finding some wisdom in my old age. More likely, Daniel's just rubbing off on me. I was resistant at first, but Daniel was right about what he said. There is no way that we could build and launch those satellites without it posing a big problem in one way or another. As much as it pains me to say, we're not grown up enough yet. Those Nox knew what they were talking about."

"Does George know?"

"No, and we think it's best that he doesn't find out. It's bad enough that Carter and I are risking our careers on this."

Jacob gave a nod. "All right. We'll see what we can do."

"The Tok'ra will want to retrieve the information on the satellites, of course," one of the other Tok'ra said. "Though we could not deploy them as a planetary defense measure, we may be able to adapt the technology as a sensor array and weapon system for ships."

"Now, _that's_ something we could use," Jack said. "When the X-303 comes off the assembly line, it sure would be nice to put weapons on it that could blast motherships out of the sky. Littler ones for the 302's would be sweet, too."

Daniel arrived at the meeting place right on time.

"I see you left the pit bull behind," Jack remarked with a little smile.

"Pit bull?" Jacob queried.

"I'll explain on the way," Daniel told him.

"They told me about your resignation, Danny. I was sorry to hear that."

Daniel's gaze fell away. "Um . . . yeah." He lifted his head. "Are we ready to go?"

During the few minutes that it took to reach the ruins, Daniel quickly told Jacob who the "pit bull" was and how she got involved.

"She sounds like quite a lady," Sam's father remarked with an amused smile.

"That she is."

As they approached the ruins, the Tok'ra piloting the ship dropped the power going to the sublight engines as much as possible to make the ship quieter. They landed it as close to the building with the underground chamber as possible.

All three of the Tok'ra were impressed by what they saw in the chamber. One problem, however, quickly became apparently.

"How are we going to get some of these bigger things up those stairs?" Sam asked. "I don't think they'll fit. And, even if they will, they must be very heavy. Even with Teal'c and the three Tok'ra, I don't know if we could do it."

"Well, the Harcesis must have had a way," Jack reasoned.

"Could there be a ring platform?"

"I scanned the structure as I flew over it and found no evidence of rings," said the Tok'ra pilot.

"That's no surprise," Daniel said. "It wouldn't have made sense for the Harcesis to create a hidden chamber that you had to use a code to get inside if any Goa'uld ship flying over it could find the rings and beam people right down here." He looked about. "Would it be possible to turn a ring platform off so that it wouldn't be detected?"

Jacob nodded. "I suppose it would be possible. There would have to be a control panel of some kind so that it could be turned on and off."

Everyone spent the next five minutes looking for a control panel. It was found behind one of the devices, which had fallen over, most likely when the building was damaged in the war with the Harcesis.

As they'd hoped, the panel activated a ring platform, which appeared in the floor at the center of the chamber. With the grinding of stone a hole opened up in the ceiling.

"We're in business," Jacob said.

Daniel frowned slightly. "I just hope that someone from the camp doesn't see the light from the rings."

"We'll bring the ship down as low as possible."

One by one the larger devices were brought over to the rings on the carts upon which they had been sitting and ringed up into the cargo hold.

As this was going on, Jacob and Sam were at the computer.

"This is an old unit," the Tok'ra remarked.

"Well, we don't know how long it's been sitting here, likely several thousand years."

"The Tok'ra never knew anything about this, the battle with that Harcesis."

Daniel came up to them. "The Goa'uld probably didn't want to advertise it, especially if the Harcesis was never taken as a host. They sure wouldn't want their Jaffa and human slaves to know that a human being could have that much power."

Jacob nodded. "You're right about that. Even though they apparently defeated him in the end, it would still make some of the Jaffa and slaves start to wonder."

"Frankly, I'm surprised they allowed that stele to be put up to commemorate the battle."

"Maybe they didn't know about it," Sam suggested. "After the battle, they might not have returned to this area."

Jacob turned his attention back to the computer. "I'm afraid that there's no way that any of the data can be hidden on this system in the way that we want. It simply isn't set up for something like that. However, there is another option. We brought a unit with us to copy the data onto. I can transfer everything to it, delete it off of the computer, then do a fresh upload back onto the computer, minus the information on the defense satellites. In that way, it won't be on there at all, so there will be no chance that it can be retrieved."

"I guess that's the only thing we can do. We'll just have to hope that something doesn't happen to your copy."

"Well, we could always give you a copy that you can stash away somewhere."

Jacob got busy on transferring the data as Sam wandered over to help move some of the smaller devices to the ring platform. Daniel began to follow her, but was stopped by Jacob.

"Jack said that your reason for quitting wasn't just what happened to Sarah," the Tok'ra said. "Care to tell me about it?"

"I just finally reached the point where I couldn't do it anymore. I'm not a soldier, but that's what I'd been turned into. So much of it became about the fighting and the search for technology to beat the Goa'uld, and I felt like I no longer had anything of value to contribute."

"Yet here you are, the one who's responsible for us getting all of this."

"Yes, well . . . I got lucky, right place, right time."

"Daniel, quite often in war, some of the biggest victories are a result of being in the right place at the right time. The thing is, though, that it was because _you_ were the one who was there, and you had the knowledge and intelligence to recognize what had been found and what it might mean. If it had been Sam or Jack there, I doubt that they'd have figured it out. Selmak's not even sure that he'd have realized the significance. Don't belittle what you did."

"Helen said pretty much the same thing."

"Well, since it sounds like she's a smart lady, maybe you should listen to her."

* * *

Thanks to the rings, the loading process went pretty quickly. On the way back to the rendevous spot, Jack told Daniel that, because he knew what all of the devices were and how to activate them, General Hammond wanted him to come back to the base for a couple of days so that he could explain everything to the scientists.

"Of course, the fact that you can read Goa'uld better than any of the other linguists would sure help with the translating," Jack added, "but I guess we'll just have to get help from Teal'c on that."

"Um . . . I could probably come and spend a few days, maybe a week or two to help with the translations."

"Really? That would be great. I could arrange for a military flight for you so you don't have to deal with a commercial flight. In fact, if you can come right away, Teal'c and I will wait for you, and you can come back with us."

"What about Sam?"

"She's flying back on the tel'tak so that she can oversee the unloading of all that stuff. Teal'c and I were going to do that as well, but we have to return the car, and. . . ."

"You were also kind of hoping that I could leave right away and come with you?"

"Yeah."

"Okay, I'll talk to Helen in the morning. Actually, this will solve a problem. The SCA will be arriving today, along with those reporters I mentioned, and having my picture appearing in newspapers and magazine articles might not be such a good idea. I had planned on making myself scarce, but not being there at all would be better. I am going to have to figure out how to get into Cairo, though. Helen has to be at the dig, and every other person there will want to stay in the hopes that they'll get their picture in those newspapers and magazines."

"Could you get a ride partway? We could meet you."

"Um, yeah, I think so. The SCA won't be arriving until ten o'clock, so Helen would have time to take me halfway, if we left early enough."

"All right, let's decide on a place to meet. If you can't get out of there, let us know."

It was no great surprise that Helen didn't have a problem with Daniel leaving for a week or two, not when she knew the importance of what the program did. She also understood why he wanted to be gone before the SCA and press arrived, and she agreed to drive him partway.

On the drive, she learned a little more about the program and some of the things Daniel had seen out there in the galaxy. She was fascinated by all the cultures they'd encountered, some originating from civilizations that had disappeared from Earth long ago.

"The Minoans!" she exclaimed when Daniel told her about Tuplo's people in the Land of Light. "How exciting. I can only imagine how many questions you had for them."

"Yeah. After we helped them with a problem they had, I got a chance to talk to them, and I learned a lot. What with all the stuff I've learned about cultures and languages, if I could actually publish, I'd have enough material for dozens of papers."

"That must be hard, not being able to tell the world what you've learned."

"Yeah. It was especially hard in the beginning." Daniel smiled slightly. "I think one of the hardest was being able to translate Linear A and not—"

"You deciphered Linear A?" Helen exclaimed.

"Well, not exactly. I didn't decipher it. I found out that it was a dialect of Goa'uld, and Teal'c taught it to me."

"Good Lord! Linear A was an alien language?" Helen laughed. "The more I hear, the more amazing it all is. What a life you led when you were there."

"Yeah, it was really something else sometimes."

* * *

When Daniel, Jack and Teal'c arrived at the SGC, they learned that half the base scientists were hovering around the new acquisitions like a bunch of excited bees. Sam pulled herself away to join Daniel, Hammond and her teammates in the briefing room.

"I doubt that I have to tell you how thrilled everyone is about this," the general said with a smile. "Throughout these years, we have not had a great deal of success obtaining advanced technology. Thanks to Doctor Jackson, we now have new technology that will be of tremendous help in our ongoing fight against the Goa'uld." He turned to Daniel. "Thank you for agreeing to come here and help us make sense of what you've provided us."

"You're welcome, sir."

"Colonel O'Neill's explanation was, out of necessity, brief, so I would like to hear more details on what you believe is the story on the Harcesis."

Daniel filled Hammond in on his guesses about what happened. "I'm pretty sure now that the Harcesis was never made a host."

"So, he would have eventually died from old age," Sam said.

"Yes, but if he'd gotten his hands on a sarcophagus or built one for himself, he could have extended his life to several hundred years, just as Pius, Shyla's father, did. With the knowledge he had, he could probably have pretty much wiped out the Goa'uld long before he died of old age."

"Too bad he didn't succeed," Jack remarked. "Things would be so much more peaceful around here." He turned to Hammond. "General, there's something you need to know. We found it necessary to reveal the existence of the Stargate Program to a civilian." He and Daniel explained everything to Hammond.

"Although I'm not happy about this," the general said, "I agree that the situation didn't give you much of a choice in the matter. Doctor Jackson, do you believe that Mrs. Danson can be trusted not to tell others what she learned?"

"She won't tell anyone, sir. I'm sure of that. I trust her completely."

"Even so, my superiors might insist that she sign a nondisclosure statement."

Daniel grimaced slightly. "Now, _that_ is something she might have a problem with. She has certain . . . issues regarding the military and government."

"Boy, is _that_ an understatement," Jack muttered.

"I can talk to her about it, but I can't guarantee that she'll be willing to put her signature on that kind of government document."

"Fair enough." The general looked about at all those seated. "Some representatives from the Pentagon will be arriving tomorrow to take a look at what you retrieved. I also understand that the Tok'ra will be returning today."

Sam nodded. "They had to get the Tel'tak back for a mission."

Jacob did not accompany the Tok'ra who arrived a bit later that day. By then, Daniel was already busy telling the SGC scientists what each of the devices did and how to activate them.

Jack came wandering in, looking around at all the activity. He went over to Daniel, who was explaining something to one of the scientists.

"So, you just about done here?" he asked.

"Yeah, pretty much. I've told them what I know, which really isn't much. It's funny how I remember every one of these things, remember even building some of them, yet I wouldn't be able to recreate any of them or explain any of the technical stuff. Now, I need to get started on the translations. Sam said that everything has been transferred to the base computers."

"Come on, then. You can do that in your office."

Daniel's brow knit. "Uh . . . my office?"

Jack smiled. "Yep."

He took Daniel up to Level 18. When Jack opened the door to Daniel's old office, and the archeologist got a look inside, he was shocked.

"It's the same as I left it."

"Yeah."

"But why?"

Jack shrugged. "We just hadn't needed the space yet."

Daniel looked at him. "You did this, didn't you. Why?"

"I guess I just kept hoping that you'd change your mind and come back someday."

Daniel found himself deeply touched by Jack's actions. He began wandering around the room, touching things. He pulled down one of his journals from a shelf.

"We were really surprised that you left those," Jack said.

"I didn't think it would be safe to take them, not when Simon was going to be keeping my stuff for me until I got back." Daniel put the book back on the shelf. He met his friend's eyes. "Thanks, Jack." He went to the computer. "Well, I guess I'd better get busy on those translations."

"Okay. Oh, by the way, you're welcome to stay with me while you're here instead of in a VIP room."

Daniel looked up at him. Though the man's voice had been casual, he got the feeling that Jack really wanted him to accept the invitation.

The archeologist gave him a nod and a little smile. "Sure. That would be great."

"Good." Jack fished into his pocket and handed him a key. "Just in case you work late. Just don't come traipsing in at some ungodly hour. I need my beauty sleep."

"I won't."

Daniel got to work on the translations. It being mostly technical jargon, it was a lot more difficult than it normally would be, and he occasionally had to call upon Teal'c for help.

Daniel didn't know how long he'd been working when he became aware that he was being watched. He looked up to see Sam in the doorway, a little smile on her face.

"What's the smile for?" he asked.

She came in the room. "It's just really nice to see you sitting there."

Daniel wasn't sure what to say to that.

Sam continued. "We've really missed you, Daniel, here and on missions. Nothing is the same without you."

Daniel's gaze slipped away to look at something on his desk, still saying nothing.

"The colonel was pretty awful to the first person who took your place on the team. Poor Airman Greeley asked for a transfer after less than a week. Lieutenant Gainsborough didn't last much longer before the colonel decided he wasn't going to work out."

"Who do you have now?"

"Captain Gomez. She's nice, quite intelligent."

"I was wondering why my replacement didn't come with you guys on the mission."

"That was her idea. She thought that it might be a little awkward to have her there. She knows that she isn't really the one we want on the team." Seeing the look on Daniel's face, Sam then said, "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said anything. You've found a new life, and I know it's making you happier. I'm really glad that it is." She managed to catch his eyes. "I just really miss you and wish you were still part of the team."

"I know, Sam. I understand."

Deciding that it was time to change the subject, Sam nodded at the computer. "So, how long do you think it will take?"

"A lot longer than if it was just some historical account or a record of a business dealing. Lots of technical words that I don't even know the meaning of in English, let alone Goa'uld. It's a shame you can't read it. The translation would probably go twice a fast."

The thought came to Sam that she wouldn't want it to go twice as fast since that would mean that Daniel would leave sooner.

Not speaking her thoughts, the astrophysicist put on a smile. "I was wondering if you'd like to go out to eat somewhere tonight. Perhaps we could all go out. It would be fun."

"Sure. That would be nice."

By the time Daniel went off to dinner with his friends, the air of excitement on base was even higher. The full significance of what they had obtained was really becoming evident to everyone, especially to the SG teams, who would be among the biggest beneficiaries of devices that could dramatically reduce the number of casualties and give them a greater edge in any conflicts against Jaffa. Daniel had received several expressions of thanks and pats on the back from men and women on the teams, which made him feel good – albeit a little embarrassed. If these things saved the lives of people who were going out there to fight the Goa'uld, that alone was enough to make him happy that he'd been able to do this for the program.

The mood was high at dinner, the four friends chatting about this and that. Even the normally reticent Teal'c was talking more. Daniel was feeling relaxed and happy and smiled often, which was a wonderful sight to his former teammates. Yet, at the same time, it brought home to them how very rare such smiles had been during the past two years or so and how blind they had been not to notice.

Sam, Jack and Teal'c all chose not to think about the day that Daniel would leave, not wanting to spoil the mood. Each one of them was secretly hoping, perhaps against hope, that their friend would choose to stay.

After dinner, Daniel and Jack bid Sam and Teal'c good night and headed off to Jack's place.

"Would you like a beer?" the colonel asked as they entered the house.

"Um, sure," Daniel replied, settling on the couch.

Jack got two Guinness from the fridge and handed one of them to the archeologist, then took a seat in the recliner. A couple of minutes passed as he silently contemplated the younger man, who was resting his head against the back cushion, eyes closed.

"I'm sorry," he abruptly stated.

Daniel lifted his head and stared at him, a frown of puzzlement on his face. "For what?"

"For a lot of things, really, mostly for being an ass, I guess."

"Jack—"

"Just . . . just let me finish, Daniel. I don't say things like this very often, so just let me get it out before I change my mind." Jack stared at his beer. "I never gave you enough credit for things, all the stuff you did that helped make SG-1 the great team that it's been. Actually, the program as a whole is guilty of that. Carter got kudos for the techy stuff, Teal'c got it for the Jaffa stuff, I got it just because I was the team leader, but you sort of . . . slipped through the cracks a lot of the time."

"Jack, I never sought kudos or pats on the back for what I did."

"I know, and how you can be so lacking in an ego has _got_ to be one of the great mysteries of the universe, given the things you can do. But, just because you don't have a big ego doesn't mean that we shouldn't have given you credit where credit was due." There was a little pause as Jack shifted uncomfortably in his chair. "I guess what I'm saying is that, though you have been a royal pain in the ass on _many_ occasions, I kind of . . . grew to admire you."

Shocked by the admission, Daniel didn't say anything.

"I just wanted you to know that," Jack finished, taking a swig from his bottle. He suddenly got to his feet. "Well, it's getting late, we're probably both still a little jetlagged, and that meeting with the brass from the Pentagon is at 0730, so we should hit the sack. You'll find a pair of your pajamas in the guest room from the last time you spent the night."

As Jack walked off toward his bedroom, he was stopped by Daniel's soft voice.

"Jack?"

"Yeah?"

"Thank you . . . for everything."

Jack turned back around, and the eyes of the two men met for a long moment. Then the older man nodded slightly and continued his journey to the bedroom. Daniel watched him go, a little smile on his face.

* * *

Daniel and the three members of SG-1 stared at the visitors. They consisted of General Bret Temmerman from the State Department, Colonel Peter Dobbs from the DOD, and Colonel Gerald Osborne from the Intelligence Oversight Committee, the committee that recent rumors were suggesting that Senator Kinsey had his eyes on becoming the chairman for once its present chairman retired later in the year.

"I have read this latest report of the items retrieved from that hidden chamber," General Temmerman said, opening the folder in his hands, "and I have to say that I am quite impressed. Not only will many of them have an impact on the battle against the Goa'uld, it's possible that some of the technology can be adapted for use here on Earth, including against terrorist attacks and other domestic threats."

"Not to mention military conflicts with hostile foreign powers," Colonel Dobbs added. "However, there appears to be something missing, at least from the report I received."

Daniel exchanged a brief glance with his former teammates.

"What's that?" Jack asked, doing a good job of pretending that he had no idea what the man was talking about.

"In the report Doctor Jackson submitted about the . . . dream that the ascended boy named Shifu gave him, he mentioned a planetary defense system consisting of a network of satellites that could detect Goa'uld ships thousands of light-years away and were equipped with weapons that could penetrate Goa'uld shields and destroy motherships. There is no mention of those satellites in this report."

"That's because the plans for the satellites aren't on the computer," Daniel said with a bland expression.

Colonel Osborne of the Intelligence Oversight Committee frowned. "And why is that?"

"I can't say. Personally, if _I_ was the Harcesis, I wouldn't have put the plans on there. I'd have been too concerned about the Goa'uld getting hold of them. And the truth is that, since all that stuff was in his head, he really didn't have to put _any_ of it in a computer. We're just lucky that he did."

Jack smiled ever so slightly. Without speaking even one lie, Daniel had just given a logical answer to the man's question.

"So, you're saying that this Harcesis chose to put all his knowledge on that computer except for that one thing?" Osborne asked suspiciously.

Daniel shook his head. "That computer doesn't contain even a fraction of all the knowledge the Harcesis would have had. All it has is the technology, and even that is mostly limited to things that the Goa'uld don't have. There is a lot of common Goa'uld technology that isn't there, like the sarcophagi, hyperdrive engines, and staff weapons."

"So, you're saying that we're out of luck on those defense satellites," Colonel Dobbs said.

"Yep, that's what he's saying," Jack confirmed.

The man frowned. "I have to say that a lot of people are not going to be pleased about that."

"Okay, now, just a bit ago, you agreed that the stuff we got was going to be a big help to us in a lot of ways. And, now, you're griping?"

The colonel's frown deepened. "Those satellites would have assured this planet's protection against Goa'uld attack."

"So, you're saying that, even given the warning that dream gave us, you'd still have built them?" Daniel asked, wishing that he was surprised.

"We could have come up with a way to avoid the trouble it caused in your dream."

"Well, since that's not an option, I guess we'll just have to keep hoping that Earth being an Asgard-protected planet will continue to be enough to keep us safe," Jack said. "That's been working fine for the past three years. So, how about if we all focus on the things we _did_ get instead of the stuff we didn't?" Jack opened the file before him and started going down the list. "Number One, a handy gadget that will enable us to turn off any Stargate we want to. Number Two, a gadget that the techy guys think they can adapt to warn SG teams whenever Jaffa are in the area. Number Three, and this is a biggy, personal force fields that will protect our guys out there from being shot by Jaffa. Speaking as someone who's had to deal with those personal shields more than once when being used by a Goa'uld, it would be pretty nice to be the ones who have rather than the ones who have not. Number Four, a possible way to make things that work like ribbon devices and can be used by anyone, not just people with Naquadah in their blood. Number Five, a possible way for us to make healing devices that anyone can use. Shall I keep going?"

"That isn't necessary, Colonel," General Temmerman answered. "We are all aware of the tremendous value of the technology we've obtained. This acquisition is the single greatest one we've made since the program's inception, with the possible exception of the technology that enabled us to create the F-302's and X-303."

"Yes, and we have Daniel here to thank for it," Jack said, making the archeologist's gaze shift uncomfortably to the table.

"Something else we are all aware of, I assure you. Doctor Jackson? The president wishes me to express his gratitude for what your knowledge and insight have provided us with."

"Thank you, sir," Daniel murmured.

The meeting continued, the participants discussing possible uses for the technology, as well as safeguards that would need to be put in place to protect it from theft by such people as the rogue NID group that had been stealing alien technology.

After the meeting ended, Daniel went to his lab and resumed the job of translating the things that had been on the Harcesis' computer. Jack stopped by a short while later.

"That went well," he said. "As usual, we had a jackass or two in the bunch, but, all in all, it was very productive. Oh, by the way, one of the things the eggheads are getting to work on right away is that healing device. We may have had one of those things for a while now, but having the actual technical stuff for one of the original models is giving them very high hopes that they can make one that will work for anyone who can learn how to use it. Fraiser's pretty excited about that. It could save a whole lot of lives, not just in the infirmary but also on missions."

Daniel smiled and nodded, thinking about the look that had been on Janet's face when she was told about the device. There had been so many lives lost due to injuries sustained on missions. How many would now be saved if they succeeded in altering that technology? And there could be a day when it would be adapted for use outside the program, healing thousands, perhaps even millions in the decades to come.

And then there was what the Tok'ra might be able to build with the defense satellite technology. Sensors with the capacity to detect Goa'uld ship activity thousands of light-years away, giving them and Earth a valuable tool in keeping track of the movements of their common enemy. Weapons that could be used to destroy motherships and other large targets. Sam was already talking about the possibility of specially designed cloaked ships that could make sneak attacks on the Goa'uld, swooping in and striking, then darting away, something that made Jack grin and rub his hands together in gleeful anticipation.

Jack jerked his head at the computer screen. "So, how much longer do you think it'll take you?"

"Um, based upon what I've gotten translated so far, I'm thinking maybe a week, perhaps a little more."

"A week, huh?"

Daniel nodded. Neither man said anything about what would happen after the job was finished.

It ended up taking Daniel just six more days to finish the translations. Typing in the last few sentences, he shut down his system and went in search of his ex-teammates. As luck would have it, he found them all in the commissary.

"Daniel," Jack greeted. "Nice to see you break away from that computer. Come have some pie."

Daniel hesitated before responding. "I'm finished."

The others paused, sharing a brief glance.

"A bit ahead of schedule, eh?" Jack remarked, keeping his tone light.

"Yeah, a little. It got easier as I went along. I guess I got used to translating stuff that I didn't understand."

Sam was now playing with her blue Jell-O rather than eating it. Jack looked at her, at Teal'c, then at Daniel.

"Let's go up top," he said, knowing that the moment had arrived for them to finally talk about the topic they had been avoiding.

After getting their jackets, they ascended to the top of the mountain. The sky was clear, the air cold and crisp. The light snow that had fallen a couple of days ago crunched beneath their boots as they walked to where they could look down upon the countryside below. None of them spoke for quite a while.

"I'm not going to ask you to stay," Jack finally said. "I want to, but I know that you've been happier there on that dig than you've been here in a long time. None of us want you to come back if it's going to make you feel bad again."

"We all want what's right for you, Daniel," Sam told her friend, "even if it means we'll hardly ever see you."

"Indeed," Teal'c stated, the single word holding a wealth of meaning.

Daniel didn't respond for a long moment. Keeping his gaze on the view, he finally began to speak. "When I left, I felt like my entire life had been a failure, that nothing I ever did was enough. I thought about Sha're. I could have spent my life with her, but I chose to unbury the gate out of curiosity, and, because of that, I lost her. I thought about all the fighting, all the deaths. When Shifu came here and talked about me finding my own path, I told him that what I was doing _was_ my path. I said that I'd chosen it to honor Sha're's strength. Even after he showed me what the path I'd chosen could result in, and I agreed that I needed to find a new one, I really just kept going the same way. But then Sarah was killed, and it all suddenly came crashing down on me, how many deaths I'd had a hand in, how taking the . . . the way of the warrior made me lose sight of myself and who I used to be."

He paused, but the others remained silent, waiting for him to continue.

"After you guys left Egypt, I spent a lot of time thinking about everything, about the stuff you said. I think that, with no great personal expectations hanging over my head, no struggle to save lives or pressure to find ways to fight the Goa'uld, I was able to put everything into perspective and really look back on my years with the program. I thought about all the things we did, the people we helped, the evil we put a stop to, and I realized that I'd been wrong. My life _hadn't_ been a complete failure. I _had_ helped to make a difference. In the huge expanse of the universe, maybe a lot of those differences were small, but they did matter, at least to the people they affected. Yes, some of the things I was a part of ended up costing lives, and I wish that could have been prevented, but for every life that was lost, many others were saved through our actions."

Daniel's eyes lowered to the ground. "I told Jack that by being just a teacher and archeologist I couldn't be disappointed in myself since I would have no high hopes for what I could accomplish. But I realize now that, if I did that, just . . ." he lifted his head and gestured toward the sky, "turned my back on what's going on out there, I would be doing something far worse than any of the mistakes I've made and the ways that I've fallen short of what I wanted to achieve." He paused a moment. "'All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing,'" he quoted. His eyes finally met those of his friends. "I'm not the kind of person who can do nothing. I never have been."

Sam's breath caught, hope growing inside her, as it was within her teammates. "Daniel?" she said questioningly.

A smile slowly grew on Daniel's face. "So . . . do you think that Captain Gomez will be terribly upset if I took back my spot on the team?"

Upon hearing those words, Teal'c smiled, Sam's eyes filled with joy, and Jack . . . Jack started to laugh. He came forward and pulled Daniel into a hearty embrace.

"If she is, Danny, I'll find some way to make it up to her."

After a moment, the commander of SG-1 stepped aside to give Sam a turn. She pounced on Daniel and gave him a hug almost tight enough to make him grunt. Then Teal'c came forward and grasped the archeologist's forearm in the traditional Jaffa greeting, his other hand resting on his friend's shoulder.

"Come on, Daniel," Jack said, slinging an arm casually over the younger man's shoulders. "Let's go talk to Hammond about getting you rehired and back on SG-1."

As they walked back to the base entrance, Daniel thought about what he didn't tell his friends, something he hadn't thought about when he was so lost in his feelings of guilt and failure. By belittling his own accomplishments, he had been doing the same to the people who were right there accomplishing them with him, Jack, Sam, Teal'c and all the others at the SGC who had been struggling to win against the Goa'uld and help people along the way. They were all in this together, every one of them, along with the Tok'ra and their other allies, and it would be together that they'd eventually succeed.

Daniel's thoughts turned to what lay ahead. With the new technology they'd obtained, it could be that their progress in the fight against the Goa'uld would make great strides forward. But, even if it didn't, even the small steps forward mattered, every gain bringing them that much closer to their goal of freeing the galaxy from the hold of the Goa'uld. And every time he helped achieve one of those steps forward, he would know that he _was_ making a difference, that he wasn't a failure . . . and never had been.

_"To climb a mountain, you must take a single step at a time. The foolish man sees only that it is taking too long, but the wise man sees each step as a victory in itself." _

THE END

* * *

Yes, I know that this fic is quite short and that some of you might think it should have been longer, but it told the story I wanted it to tell. Sure, I could have spent more time focusing on Daniel's angst-ridden time on the dig, but let's face it. Until that stele was found, nothing he did there would have been all that exciting, and I think I covered the angst enough. As for what will happen as a result of Daniel's discovery, that's a whole other story, a sequel that is already in the planning stage. This story was about Daniel's descent into his feelings of guilt and failure and how he ultimately rose above them.

By the way, in case you're wondering about the source of that quote at the end, it's mine, although I have no doubt that others have said similar things in the past.


End file.
